


Remember You

by thesearchforbluejello



Category: Whiskey Cavalier (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Romance, Whump, also because it's this disaster battle couple there is, and beaucoup de bickering, cue tango music, most of these are mission-gone-wrong fics so there is, otherwise known as the amnesia prompt collection, this is somehow my first 5+1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-07
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2020-01-06 02:10:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 27,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18378800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesearchforbluejello/pseuds/thesearchforbluejello
Summary: Five times Will and Frankie forget each other and one time they don't.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Each chapter is a stand alone one-shot, but vaguely set in the same canon-compliant-but-not-adherent au. Big thanks to redbrunja and tyrsenian for prompting this mess and letting me run with it.

There’s someone standing beside her. There’s also someone seated on the bed next to her on the opposite side. “Hey you,” he says as she tries to focus on his face. 

“Hi,” she says on reflex.

“Glad you’re awake. You had me worried.”

She squints at him. “Why?”

“You took a really bad fall on the stairs at the hotel. Hit your head pretty hard.”

She takes a moment to process that but comes up with nothing. “I did?”

“Yeah,” he says with the barest breath of a laugh that isn’t humorous in the least, “you did.”

“Mrs. Carlisle,” the other man says and she struggles to look at him as the light from the shaded windows glares off his white coat, “when you came in this morning we did your evaluation. Can you tell me any of the words I asked you to remember?”

“We did?”

“Yes,” the doctor says.

“I don’t remember.”

“Can you tell me what day it is?”

She can’t, which is frustrating, so she picks one at random. “Tuesday.”

He writes that down like it’s important and she knows then that she was wrong. “Can you tell me your husband’s name?”

She looks at the man sitting beside her and he squeezes her hand. There’s something in his face that she doesn’t read as hope but she isn’t sure what it really is. “We’re married?” she says.

“Yeah boo,” he says. “We’re married.” It sounds like he’s prompting her but she remembers nothing about this. His presence beside her is familiar like her own arms are familiar, part of her she doesn’t need to think about to know they’re there. She doesn’t know she’s crying until he starts tracing circles over the back of her hand with his thumb. “It’s okay,” he says.

“I don’t remember getting married,” she sobs. 

“That’s okay, that’s okay.”

“Why am I crying?!” she says, throwing her hands up, which only makes her break down a little more.

“Head trauma can make it difficult to control your emotions,” the doctor says. “Just let it pass. I’ll come back in a little while.”

Her husband, apparently, settles further onto the bed and she turns toward him, tugging him to her with fingers gripping his arm until she’s hugging him and her face is buried in his neck. He hugs her back and lets her cry.

It only takes a few minutes for her to calm. “I’m sorry for crying,” she says eventually, without looking at him, her head on his chest. 

“It’s okay.”

“I’m sorry for not remembering you, too.”

He laughs. “Yeah that stings a little, but it’s understandable.”

She’s aiming for humor, for some reason, when she says, “At least you’re hot, so I guess I could’ve done worse.” 

He laughs so hard that it disturbs her comfort and she pulls away, looking betrayed. “I’m sorry,” he says but is still laughing hard enough that she knows he’s not actually apologizing. “I just-- it’s okay, come on,” he says, lifting his arm so she can fit herself against his side again. “I’m sorry, but I’m never going to be able to let you live that one down.”

She rests her chin on his chest and glares up at him. “You’re an ass.”

He laughs again. “Now you sound more like you.” She settles again and lays her arm over his chest. “Are you comfortable?” he asks, sounding like he’s amused.

“I will be if you stop talking.”

“Yeah, now you sound a lot more like you.”

She’s too tired to retort.

*****

She presses a hand over her eyes to block out the light. A hand rubs slowly up and down her back. Right, the guy. Husband. Or whatever he is. She’s pretty sure he’s not her husband. She can’t dredge up a name, but he’s solid and warm beside her. He’s so warm that she’d get closer if she could but while asleep she’s already managed to hook her knee and ankle over his leg. Even though she’s tangled in the blankets, she’s half on top of his chest.

“You okay?” he asks.

She just grunts in response and presses her face between his neck and her pillow.

“What’s wrong?”

“Head,” she mumbles.

“Well, yeah. I mean, he hit you pretty hard. You’ve got a massive concussion.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Is it the light that’s bothering you?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. Let me up.”

“No,” she grumbles and it sounds pouty even to her.

“Come on,” he says. 

She groans and rolls away from him. She hears his footfalls on the tile floor and then the scrape of the curtain rings as he pulls them shut. She lets her hand fall away from her face at the relief of the darkness. “Thanks, Will,” she mumbles.

“Hey,” he says, “you remembered my name! That’s good.”

She squints at him. “I did?” She considers it. “I do.”

He settles on the edge of her bed again with one leg tucked beneath him and one foot on the floor. “Do you remember _your_ name?”

“Yes,” she says, affronted. He looks at her expectantly. “I just can’t right now.” He laughs humorlessly, like he wants to be amused but isn’t. She wraps her fingers around the wrist he’s resting his weight on. “I’m freezing.”

“Do you want me to get you another blanket?” She pauses before she responds. Something is stopping her from saying what’s really on her mind, and given how much haze she can still feel burying everything back out of the reach of her searching, she lets it stop her. “You okay?” he asks.

“Fine,” she says. She shifts her position on the bed and tries to settle more comfortably. 

“Frankie,” he starts. She looks at him on reflex; even if she can’t recall her name with it just out of reach, she knows it when he says it. “I know you’re confused. But everything will be fine. It’ll all come back and then we’ll fly home. Just don’t-- don’t shut me out. Not right now. When you’re feeling better, fine. Do whatever you need to do. But not right now.”

She studies him for a moment. “I don’t know what that means.”

“Yes you do.” He’s looking at her so earnestly that she wants to punch him, for some reason. She refrains, instead pulling the blankets closer around her. She can’t suppress the shiver that creeps its way down her back. “You’re really that cold?” he asks.

“No, I was just saying it as a conversation starter.”

“I’d say this concussion was making you grumpier than usual, but no, you actually sound more like yourself than you have since yesterday.” She glares at him but it’s undercut by the way she’s clutching the blankets under her chin and he smiles. “Do you…” he starts, and gestures to the blankets.

“No.”

“Yes you do, come on.”

“No,” she snaps. 

“We’re partners. It’s okay.”

“No,” she insists. She sniffs and he raises his eyebrows. “ _Fine_ ,” she says. She presses her hand to her eyes. “You frustrate me.”

“I know,” he says, pulling the blankets back and sliding into the bed beside her, jostling her in the process.

“If I start crying again, it’ll be your fault and I’m going to punch you in the throat.” Will settles himself with his head on her pillow. There isn’t much room in the bed, so her chin is almost on his shoulder and her knees are against his leg. “You’re really warm,” she says, so softly she’s not sure she actually said it aloud. “I’m not snuggling you,” she says, louder.

“You did earlier.”

“I don’t remember that,” she says, in a tone of voice that very clearly indicates she does.

“It’s fine; I’m not complaining. At least if you’re over there you won’t drool on my shirt again.”

“I did not.”

“You did.”

“I can’t believe I thought we were married.”

He turns his head on the pillow to look at her. “You remember?”

“It’s fuzzy. But-- it’s like I can actually grasp at things now. Which is why I definitely know I didn’t drool on you.”

“You were asleep; how would you remember? I had a little wet spot on my shirt, right here,” he says, pointing to his chest.

She tries not to smile. “I’d never marry you,” she says.

“Please. I’m a total catch. I have lots of great qualities.”

“Mmhmm,” she says as she lets her eyes close.

“I do; it’s true.”

“Mmhmm,” she says again, faintly, more on reflex than to deliberately provoke him.

She falls asleep with her forehead resting against his shoulder. Will watches the ceiling and lets her sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed this bit of fluff! Not everything in this series will be so light, but I had fun with this one. Leave a comment and let me know what you think!
> 
> The series is a wip, so hang tight and more one-shots for it will appear soon!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the second oneshot, and it's Will's turn this time.

Someone’s hand is on his chest, a heavy weight holding him down. He shifts uncomfortably. “Hey,” a voice says and he tries to blink his vision clear. His head is in her lap and she’s looking down at him with a gentle smile that makes him smile back, even if he’s not sure why. “How’re you feeling?” she says.

He studies her face for a moment, turning those words over and over to try and squeeze some meaning out of them. Wherever they are is dim and her face is cast in the half light struggling in as she watches him watch her. “Um,” he says, and he was going to say something else but the words have gone hazy and indistinct at the edges, nebulous and insubstantial like the shadows on her face. “Mm,” he says instead as the meaning bleeds out of the words and leaves him with inconsequential sound.

She smoothes her hand across his forehead, soothing the confusion away. “It’s okay,” she says because she can read the stress that he can’t articulate in the tension of his shoulders. He leans into her touch.

There’s a full sentence building in the pressure behind his eyes but all he says is, “Happened?”

“I threw a grenade,” she says. “Didn’t know they’d planted explosives, so it went…” she tilts her head like she’s considering and the shadows shift, “about as well as you’d expect.”

“Hm,” he says.

“We’re stuck until the team comes to extract us.”

“Hm,” he says again. 

“I have to say, I think I like you better like this. You’re quiet.” He looks up at her and feels his brow quirk as he huffs. She laughs, quiet and gentle, and smoothes her hand over his forehead again and he closes his eyes. “I should’ve known you’d be a cuddler, too,” she says and he’s got just enough of a grasp on this situation to know she’s teasing him. 

“Good cuddle,” he says, which he realizes belatedly doesn’t make much sense and he must look very confused because she laughs. He looks up at her and watches her laugh.

“I’m sure,” she says. She looks away from him and even with how close he is to her the shadows obscure her expression. He clumsily sets his hand over hers where it still rests on his chest; she tenses and the gentle pressure of her palm on his forehead vanishes.

“You okay?” he asks and some part of him is proud for managing two words at once.

“Fine,” she says. “You caught most of the blast.” That’s not what he meant and he’s about to attempt to say so when she tenses again, alertness suddenly warping her body language into something more familiar, something he can almost recall. “Shh,” she says. She eases his head off her legs with a gentle hand gripping the back of his neck and the other cradling his head; even so he winces as she slips her fingers out from between his head and the floor. “Stay quiet,” she whispers.

She moves away with quiet footfalls on the concrete floor but he can see how stiff she in from having sat still enough to not disturb him when he was unconscious. He’s covered behind a stack of crates and loses sight of her for a moment as she ducks behind another stack across from him. The weak light is pouring in as a stuffy haze from the windows above; they glare bright in his vision as he realizes they're there and he shuts his eyes.

He startles back to consciousness an indeterminate amount of time later at the sound of an explosion. Pieces of wood clatter against the floor and bits of debris skitter until they come to rest. He turns his head to look but it sets his vision swimming and nausea gripping his throat. He hears gunshots exchanged, and struggles to keep his eyes on her in the shadows beneath the blinding light of the windows. Wood chips and sprays off the crate as it takes the bullets meant for her.

He can’t quite manage to keep his eyes open as the brightness presses against his eyes and forces them to close.

*****

Frankie puts her hands on his shoulders and tries to rouse him without moving him at all. His brow furrows for a moment as he registers her voice. “Will, come on. We’ve got to go,” she says again. He manages to peel his eyes open at that, but it looks like a struggle. “There you go,” she says, smiling. “Let’s sit you up, okay? We need to leave before they send more guys.”

“Okay,” he mumbles.

She pulls his arms up around her neck and leans over him to wrap an arm around his waist and hold the back of his neck so he doesn’t accidentally give himself whiplash as she sits him up. He collapses against her and she keeps her hold on him. “I know,” she says. He groans. “Are you going to throw up?” He presses his forehead into her shoulder and groans again. “Okay, taking that as a yes.” She moves to sit beside him and keeps ahold of his tac vest as he retches up nothing but stomach acid and spits it on the floor. He makes a sound of annoyance and she can clearly read frustration on his face. “It’s okay,” she says, for lack of anything better to say, and reaches around to dig the bandana out of the pocket of his vest where she knows he keeps it. She holds it out to him but he just stares at it. “You’re so high maintenance,” she says, dragging it across his mouth before shoving it back in his vest. “We’ve got to get you up. Are you ready?” He just grunts in response as she rises to her knees beside him. “I’m taking that as a yes because there’s no other option right now.”

She uses his tac vest to pull him up until they’re chest to chest and most of his weight is on her. “Ready?” she asks again, mostly to keep his attention on her, as she pulls his arms around her neck.

“Yeah,” he says, or something vaguely like it that she takes to be agreement anyway.

She manages to get him standing, even if it takes bearing most of his weight to do so. They’re still chest to chest and the pockets of his vest catch on hers as he shifts his weight. He looks at her cheek, where a piece of the crate had caught her, and moves his arm from her shoulders to press his thumb to it with worried eyes.

She can’t step away from him, however much she wants to. Instead, she says, “It’s just a scratch. We need to move.”

She shoulders his weight, hand gripping his wrist to keep his arm tight across her shoulders, and grips his vest with her other hand. He walks unsteadily beside her, every step uncomfortably jostling both of them, but he’s managing to put one front of the other and she knows that’s the most she can ask of him right now. 

They make their way to the wall their attackers had blown through and navigate around debris and bodies. Will looks like he’s fading fast. “Come on, partner,” Frankie says. “We’ll find somewhere to lay low and wait for the team to come get us.” She glances at him again. “I saved you half my granola bar.”

“Thanks,” he grunts, which is good at least. 

Frankie steers them into the forest that pushes at the edges of the empty lot holding the abandoned factory they’d just been in. She knows they can’t walk along the road because it’s just a matter of time before reinforcements are sent for them. “Keep going,” she says. He’s having trouble keeping his chin off his chest but she can still see the factory through the trees. 

It’s just vanished from sight when his knees start to buckle. He lurches forward and Frankie wrenches her back as she tries to keep him standing. “Okay,” she says and gracelessly lets him sit on the forest floor, dropping to her knees to continue bearing some of his weight. She hears vehicles on the road just out of sight. She lays him down on his side. “Will, listen to me, okay?” He looks at her as she shrugs out of her tac vest and unzips her coat. “I’m going to take care of them. Stay right here. Understand?”

“Yeah,” he says. She doesn’t think he’s capable of going anywhere at the moment, but she needs to be sure anyway.

“Don’t move, don’t speak, just stay here and stay quiet. I know that's hard for you.”

“Hah hah,” he says drily. She smiles as she pulls her vest back on over her long sleeve. She folds her jacket and lifts his head with gentle fingers to slip it under his temple. 

Standing from him she pulls her sleeves over her hands and slips her thumbs through the holes to ward off the damp chill that's biting at her without her jacket. “I’ll be right back.”

She uses her knife to saw through the green fibers of some young pines and carries them over to where Will is dozing uncomfortably. He wakes as she approaches. “I’m going to cover you up. Don’t move, remember?”

“Yeah,” he says.

She lays the pine boughs over him and hopes it’s enough to disguise him as part of the undergrowth. “I’ll come back.”

“I know,” he says.

She nods and heads back toward the factory as it starts to pour.

*****

It’s not that she necessarily _planned_ to engage them, but when they’d started moving towards where she’d hidden Will it had stopped being an option and become a necessity. A shot hits a tree near her head and she ducks reflexively even though she knows she can’t out-duck a bullet. She’s leading them away from Will, trying to make sure that they’re all following her and none are splitting off in his direction. She can hear footfalls right behind her; she’s fast, but she’s only eaten half of a granola bar in the past thirty-six hours and hasn’t had water in the past twenty-four. She’s also been awake since yesterday so she could watch over Will while he was unconscious and is soaked to the bone in just her long-sleeved undershirt in the cold rain. All of it is catching up with her now and making her ache as she runs.

When she can hear his breath behind him she digs her foot, dropping her stance so she doesn’t slip on the pine needles, and pivots. She hits the man with a shoulder to the gut and lets his momentum carry him over her shoulder and to the group, where he lays in an unmoving lump. She grabs his sidearm to disarm him and uses it instead of her own to kill him and fire at the others behind her. She takes two down before the third starts firing back at her. She takes cover behind a massive pine and it takes a few of the shots meant for her. She fires back when he pauses and drops him.

Another shot narrowly misses her from the side and she realizes that they’ve managed to flank her. There’s no cover back the way they’d come, and she can’t move toward Will. She grabs a grenade from her vest and pulls the pin, holding the spoon until the footfalls are close enough for her to have an accurate throw. 

She knows she’s too close, but she throws it anyway and runs as it hits the ground. The concussion of the blast throws her forward and she bounces along the ground like a rag doll. It takes her a moment to get her bearings on the ground but the cold rain helps ease the disorientation. She takes stock to ascertain that she miraculously wasn’t hit by any shrapnel and rolls to her side before staggering to her feet. She shakes her head like it will clear the ringing in her ears and goes to make sure all the men are dead.

Only when she’s sure they are does she set off back to Will, stopping frequently and doubling back to make sure she’s not being followed.

Her teeth are chattering and the rain is blinding her as it runs down her face, but she manages to find her way back to him even in the failing light. He looks up at her when she clears the brush from over him. “You okay?” she asks.

“Yeah,” he says. “But… confused.”

“I’ll bet,” she says.

“It’s freezing,” he says.

“Yeah. I know.” She sits beside him, pistol in hand, and tries not to let her shoulders tense up in the cold. “They’ll be here soon.”

*****

Night has fallen and Frankie is struggling not to fall asleep. Will is either asleep or unconscious, but she’s not sure which. Her watch confirms that the rain stopped two hours ago, leaving a chill breeze in its wake. Will is shivering beside her, but his jacket had at least kept him mostly dry except for his legs.

The first time she sees the flicker of light she thinks she imagined it. She’s on edge anyway, though, watching to see if it happens again. When it does she drags herself to her feet, standing on numb legs and raising her gun.

“Frankie!” she hears. “Frankie!” 

“Jai?!”

“Frankie, where are you?” 

She clicks her flashlight on and points it in their direction. “We’re over here! It’s about time!” she shouts.

“Yes, you’re welcome,” Jai says.

“We’re happy to see you too,” Standish adds.

“Frankie are you okay? Where’s Will?” Susan asks as they finally come in view.

“Over here. He took a bad hit; he needs to get checked out.”

Susan kneels next to him. “Hey, Will.”

“Hi,” he says drowsily.

“Hi,” she says. “Come on, we’re gonna sit you up.”

He blinks at her a moment more before recognition lights up his face. “Hi Suze!” he says as Susan slips a hand beneath his shoulders, smiling with a goofy grin that would make Frankie smile back if he wasn’t still so disoriented.

“Hi Will,” Susan says again. “How are you feeling?”

“Eh.”

Frankie kneels next to Susan, shaking pine needles off her jacket that he’d been using as a pillow. It’s too soaked to lend any warmth but she throws it over one shoulder rather than leaving it there. “Of course you remember her name but not mine,” she grouses. Susan smiles at that.

Will looks at her. “She’s not mean to me.”

Frankie rolls her eyes but the smile is there. “Up we go,” she says and they slowly put him up. He lets himself relax against them as he tries to get his bearings.

“Ugh,” he says and leans to Frankie, who’s closer, and presses his face into her shoulder. She and Susan both rub his back. 

“Take your time,” Susan says.

“Uh,” Frankie says, “actually, we should probably get going before they send more guys in here to kill us.”

“Right,” Susan agrees, “you’re right. ‘Kay Will, let’s go. Ready?” He mumbles his assent and they pull him to his feet. He ends up sandwiched between them, Susan taking some of his weight by holding his arm across her shoulders and keeping her other arm around his waist and Frankie by catching him as he lurches forward with both arms around his waist. “Easy,” Susan says.

They disentangle themselves and manage to start moving forward as Standish and Jai lead them out of the forest. The truck isn’t far and when they reach it Standish goes immediately to the back and opens the hatch. 

“Why don’t you get in first and we’ll sit this guy in the middle,” Susan says to Frankie, but she’s smiling at Will to keep his attention.

“Okay,” Frankie says.

“Here.” Standish holds out a folded blanket.

“Ugh, _thank you_ ,” Frankie says, shaking it open. She slides into the back seat of the SUV, all the way to the opposite side, and pulls half the blanket around herself as she drops her sodden jacket and tac vest on the floor. Susan helps Will into the truck and Frankie reaches for him as he slides across. “Here we go,” she says as Susan climbs in beside him and they get the other half of the blanket around his shoulders. She drops his vest at her own feet. He’s squinting in the glaring dome light above them and when Jai and Standish finally shut the doors he sighs with relief.

“We’re a few hours from the nearest hospital,” Jai says.

“I’ll just sleep,” Will says. He shivers and Frankie pulls the blanket tighter around him. She puts her feet up on the console.

“Frankie,” Jai says. “Wet boots? On the console? What-- come on.”

“I haven’t slept in two days,” she says. “I don’t give a shit about my boots.” She makes herself comfortable and as she settles into place it tugs the blanket, pulling Will toward her. He lets it, resting his head on her shoulder and leaning against her, all but pinning her in place. “Okay,” Frankie says in surprise. Susan covers her mouth and stifles the laughter Frankie can see in her shoulders anyway. “If you didn’t have a severe concussion I’d punch you in the head,” Frankie says to Will. He just grunts in response. “Fine,” she says. She shifts again so he’s more comfortable against her and pulls the blanket closed around both of them, holding it in place with her arms around him.

“Thanks, Frankie,” he mumbles.

“You’re welcome,” she says. “I guess.”

Jai doesn’t bother trying to stifle his laughter, and after a moment neither do Susan and Standish. Frankie just ignores them and lets herself fall asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Funny how Frankie is a little bit different when she's just around Will compared to when she's around everyone else too, isn't it?
> 
> This was initally supposed to be all about Will since the first one was all about Frankie, but this is where we ended up instead. There's plenty of Will-centric stuff coming up, though, believe me.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At long last, the third one shot. BIG THANKS to tyrsenian for the beta of his trash fire, like, four times.

Will locks the campground gate behind them and climbs back into their stolen truck. “Taking the scenic route today,” he says.

“Great,” Frankie says joylessly.

He glances over at her as rocks on the dirt road crunch and crackle under the tires. Her face is still colorless and the stray hairs escaping from her ponytail are pasted to her neck. She turns her face away from him, toward the window, lips pressed in a tight line. He looks away too, back to the road.

The drive into the campground is longer than Will expects, but that’ll play to their advantage. They reach the main office, still boarded up for the season, and Will pulls the truck up behind the building where it can’t be seen from the road. “Okay, let’s get going. We’ll find somewhere to spend the night until extraction.”

Frankie pushes the door open and swings her legs stiffly toward it, grabbing the handle above the door frame. Will drops out of the truck and shuts his own door. The afternoon air is bitter with a collecting chill but not cold enough to pose a real danger of hypothermia, even if they’re forced to spend the whole night outside. He hears a thud in the dirt on the other side of the truck and rushes around the front to see Frankie on the ground.

“Hey, are you okay?”

“Don’t touch me,” she spits and he pulls away the hand he’s set on her shoulder in surprise.

“Okay,” he says. She pulls herself back to her feet with a tight grip on the door. He speaks into the tension that’s collecting between them like static even though he can feel it pressing against his face. “It shouldn’t take us long to find a cabin or something; I think there’s a map over there.” She trails behind him as he walks towards it and he asks over his shoulder, “Are you sure you’re alright?” He knows they drugged her; he was tied up right next to her when they injected her with whatever was in the syringe. He also knows it was intended to be used when they started torturing them. The fact that they hadn’t made it that far doesn’t diminish his concern over what the drug was actually supposed to do.

“I’m fine,” is her immediate response.

“That was a little too quick,” he says. “Try again, but make it more believable.”

“Yeah, I’ve bet you’ve heard that before.”

“Wow, okay, I was wrong; you’re fine.” She’s just a couple steps behind him as he starts studying the map. “You know what,” he says as she sniffs, “that was uncalled for.” He’s expecting a retort but when she stays silent and the soft crunch of her footsteps stop he turns over his shoulder. Her eyes are squeezed shut and there’s blood edging its way between her fingers where her hand is pressed to her face. “Hey,” he says but she doesn’t move. He rips the velcro open on the pocket of her tac vest where he knows she stores her banana and retrieves it. “Here,” he says. She doesn’t take it. He pulls her hand away and presses the bandana to her face, bringing her hand back up to hold it in place. “Look at me,” he says. “Frankie, look at me.” When she doesn’t, he ignores her earlier warning and puts his hands on her face, lifting her chin with his fingers under her jaw. He half-expects a punch to the gut for it but she only flinches. She just blinks at him as he studies her. Her irises are just a thin ring around her pupils, the green made gray by the cloudy afternoon light. “You look stoned,” he says. 

“‘M not.”

“Actually, I think you are.” He can feel the warmth of her skin against his fingertips and he presses a palm to her forehead. “You’re hot,” he says.

“Thanks,” she says drily, muffled by the bandana.

“Funny. I mean, we’re both tens, that’s not debatable, but I meant that you have a fever.”

“It’s fine.”

“Yeah, totally fine, come on.” She follows him as he sets off toward where the map indicates they can find cabins on the far side of the campground, out of sight from the main office.

They pass loop after loop of campsites and as the horizon brightens and the rest of the sky begins to darken, Frankie starts lagging behind him. She’s struggling to catch her breath even though he’s been movingly slowly to accommodate her, doing so against his better judgement in case they’re found sooner rather than later. 

“We’re almost there,” he says in an attempt at comfort.

She looks at him, so vacantly he’s not even sure she knows what he said. “Here, I’ll give you a piggy-back.” She just looks at him. “You won’t have to walk,” he points out. “Come here.” He turns his back to her and looks over his shoulder. “Put your arms around my neck.” She does. “Ready?”

“Yeah,” she says softly.

“Okay.” She only jumps a little so he does most of the work to lift her as he adjusts his grip on her legs. She makes a small noise of discomfort as she’s jostled that he’s sure she tried to swallow. “You’re heavier than you look.”

“Rude,” she says softly as she rests her chin on his shoulder.

“Please, I’m a delight.” She doesn’t respond to that. He ignores the fear that's started creeping slowly up his neck.

*****

The forest is darkening at the edges of the road when they finally make it to the cabins. Will’s arms are aching from holding Frankie’s weight; he knows that if he lets go of her, the weak grip she has on his neck isn’t enough to stop her from falling. He also knows that’s about to pose a problem.

“Hey,” he says, “you’ve got to hold on for a minute, okay? I’m gonna have to pick the lock.” She doesn’t respond. He can’t look at her because her chin is still on his shoulder and her temple is resting against his. “Frankie,” he says. “Hey,” he says again. She just hums in assent and he’s pretty sure she didn't understand. “Okay, I’m going to put you down.” He releases his grip on one of her legs and grabs her arms instead, holding her in place before letting go of her other leg as well. He stoops a little in the same motion so her feet touch the ground and he keeps his grip on her arms until she’s steady enough for a moment for him to disentangle her. He keeps her in the corner of his vision as he digs the lock picks out of his vest and picks the padlock. They’re lucky the picks hadn’t been found and confiscated with their coms and everything else.

She stares vacantly at the door and Will worries a little more.

The padlock opens with a click and Will pulls it free. “In we go. One star accommodations for tonight.” He grabs ahold of Frankie’s vest to guide her inside. The stale smells of dust and wood and disuse assault them as they enter but the cabin is clean and there’s a small bed with a vinyl covered mattress against the wall. Will sits her down on it and kneels in front of her, easing some of the ache in his legs that’s collected from carrying her weight. He holds on to the sides of her vest to try to keep her focused on him. “Talk to me,” he says. She looks at him, finally, blinking to focus, but she doesn’t answer. “How do you feel?”

“Tired,” she says. The word is thick and fuzzy at the edges.

“Okay. What else?” She looks at him with confusion. He grips her fingers with one hand. She draws a sharp breath and pulls away. “Does that hurt?”

“Yeah.”

“What else hurts?”

“Everything.” This word is even fuzzier, almost one syllable instead of three.

“Okay. Okay.” That explains a lot. “Do you know where we are?” He’s hoping to figure out just how disoriented she is.

“No.” There’s no alarm there, just resignation.

“Do you know where we were?”

“No,” she says again, dully.

“Okay. Do you know why we’re here?”

“No.” There’s still no alarm, no worry, just obvious fatigue. She’s not even really looking at him anymore, just looking past him. It's obvious indifference and that strikes a chord of dissonance with her usual character that Will tries not to dwell on. 

“Do you know who I am?” 

Her gaze slides back to him and there’s a brief moment of confusion that flickers over her face before she says, “No.”

Will tries to ignore the way his stomach drops at that. “What’s your name?” 

“Dunno,” she says, or at least he assumes that’s what word the sound was meant to be.

“Okay. That’s okay. We’re going to be here awhile, so let’s get you settled.” He unzips her vest and slides it off her shoulders, ignoring the discomfort on her face. He digs her bandana out again, still bloody, and folds the vest up with the pockets on the inside before placing it on the mattress. He helps her lay down with the vest under her head. She winces as he moves her and huffs uncomfortably as she shifts on the mattress. He touches his palm to her forehead as gently as he can. She’s still burning up, even more so than before. “I’ll be right back,” he says. She just stares lackluster at the exposed beams of the ceiling.

He noticed a stream running behind the cabins and searches the four small cabinets on the wall for something to collect water. They were clearly cleaned out when the cabin was closed up for the winter, but he’s lucky enough to find a tin mug abandoned in the third one. 

The stream is brutally cold as he dips Frankie’s blue bandana in. He hadn’t exactly expected it to be warm, given that there’s still ice ringed around the protruding rocks, but even so it makes his breath catch. He retrieves his own bandana and soaks that as well before filling the mug. The stream is a mixed blessing because he won’t chance either of them drinking from it without something to treat the water with, not when extraction is eight hours out and neither of them are going to die of dehydration before then. He also knows he can’t just dump her into the water to bring her fever down; as many movies as he’s seen use that trick, he knows the temperature change would likely throw her immediately into shock and potentially even prove fatal, especially as he has no way to warm her back up afterwards. It’s not an option. At the very least, though, he can use the cold water to provide some relief.

The cabin door scrapes the plywood floor where it’s slightly buckled from years of changing weather but Frankie doesn’t stir at the noise.

She seems to have fallen asleep in the few minutes he was gone and Will kneels next to the bed again as he sets the tin cup on the floor. He folds his bandana and places it on her forehead to cool her down a bit. It’s so cold that she wakes and tries to push it away with a grimace. “No, no, leave it on. You’ll feel better in a minute.” She reaches up again to move it and he grabs her hand to stop the motion. He places her hand by her side but when she starts to reach up again he catches it and keeps ahold, resting both of their hands on her stomach. He uses her already bloody bandana to wipe at the blood that’s dried on her face. The fabric is so cold that it’s not as effective as it would be if he had warm water, but it at least lets him clean her up a little bit.

After a minute she closes her eyes and relaxes even though he can tell she’s still somewhat awake.

“Okay,” he says when most of the blood is finally gone. He shakes the bandana open and hangs it over the headrail of the bed to dry. “Not that I think you’re up for going anywhere, but stay here. I’m going to see if I can find us supplies.”

She doesn’t respond, not that Will expected her to.

*****

One of the things they’d mercifully left in his vest was a granola bar. It was a sloppy move on their part, because for all they’d known it was a lightweight explosive textured like a granola bar. As Will unwraps it he’s glad it’s just chocolate, oats, and almonds, because he can’t eat explosives.

He crunches an almond as he folds the wrapper over and slips it back into his vest. He knows Frankie usually packs her own snacks but he hadn’t checked and doesn’t want to eat the whole bar in case she needs something later.

The lock on the next cabin over is rusted and he almost breaks one of the picks getting it to open. It’s not even worth it because it’s completely empty inside.

The next cabin is also empty.

In the third cabin he finds a box with a handful of matches that he can’t use because fire would make it too easy for them to be found. He pockets them anyway. In the last cabin he finds a box of playing cards. The box has been chewed by mice, but the cards are mostly undamaged. These are more useful than the matches because he can at least play himself in a few games of solitaire to pass the time. Plus, if he’s playing solitaire then at least Frankie can’t cheat.

Will leaves all of the cabins unlocked behind him with the padlocks on the table inside so it’s less obvious that one of them isn’t locked.

He pushes the door of the cabin open again with the same rough scrape and in the past half hour he’s been gone the light has failed enough that he has to click on his flashlight to see. He pulls the door shut and sets the cards and matches on the small table in the middle of the space.

He kneels on the floor beside Frankie and pulls the bandana away. It’s warm so he dunks it in the cup of water until the green fabric darkens again as he presses his fingers to her wrist. She’s shaking even more than the minor tremble she’d had before and it makes it hard for him to judge her heartbeat. He presses his fingers to her throat instead and she turns her head away from the pressure, toward him. He’s been trying to keep the beam of the flashlight out of her face but he can see now that she’s had another bloody nose while he was gone and there’s blood fresh and shining on her lips and trailing down her cheek. Her heart rate is worryingly rapid and he knows it’s both why she can’t catch her breath and why her blood pressure is high enough to be giving her nosebleeds.

He squeezes out some of the water from the bandana before placing it back on her forehead, resting his hand there for a moment to keep it in place as she turns her head away again, shifting on the bed in obvious discomfort.

“Getting worse?” he asks even though he knows she won’t answer.

The fear he's tried to quell is rising again, a phantom pressure in his throat that makes him feel like he'll choke. He knows how to compartmentalize. He knows how to set aside emotion and get the job done, even if it's something he sometimes struggles with and something Frankie's accused him of failing at before. He knows himself well enough to know that he can do it. Sometimes it's difficult, though, and those closest to him are a weak spot, a pressure point; he knows this too. He just didn’t expect her to be one so soon.

He pours a little of the water on the other bandana and wipes the blood away. It’s fresh enough that it comes right off and it increases the worry that has been pawing with needle-sharp claws at his gut for the past few hours.

He hangs the bandana to dry again and settles at the table to wait out the night, slipping the cards from their box.

*****

The distraction is a startling failure and he loses the first several games in rapid succession as he tries to listen to her unsteady breathing while he plays. He’s finally starting to gain some ground on the last game when he hears her breath catch.

She shifts against the vinyl mattress and he looks over at where he can just barely make out her silhouette at the edge of the glow of his flashlight. “Will?” she says, barely audible, and he almost knocks his chair over in his haste to stand, catching his foot on one of the legs. “Will,” she says again and as he kneels next to the bed so he doesn’t jostle her he realizes that she’s not even conscious. She makes a noise of frustration and Will puts a hand on her arm. 

“Frankie, wake up.”

She squeezes her eyes shut tighter and digs a heel into the mattress. She’s tense beneath his hand and she makes a sound of desperation that’s lodged somewhere halfway between horror and outrage and Will’s chest aches.

“Wake up,” he snaps again. He grips her arm a little harder and that’s what rouses her. She comes to with a gasp. She pulls at her jacket and brushes the bandana away in the same panicked motion. She looks at Will in alarm and tries to pull away. “It’s okay,” he says, “it’s just me.”

She pulls at her jacket again. “Saw you die,” she gasps. “I saw you die.”

“What?”

She’s gasping, panicked, pulling at her jacket but not managing to grab the zipper. Night has fallen and the cabin is chilly but she’s pulling so desperately at the fabric that he unzips it for her anyway. She shivers at the air suddenly cooling her shirt, damp with sweat, but stops tugging.

She makes a noise that starts as a groan and ends as a whimper. “I saw you die,” she says again and the words are bleeding at the edges with something that borders on hysteria.

She’s moving against the mattress, restless, and he doesn’t know if it’s pain that’s preventing her from stilling or the panic from whatever she’s just dreamed but he does know that he needs to calm her down. He takes both of her hands to stop her from grabbing at the hem of her jacket again, gripping as gently as he can manage. “Don’t be such a raincloud,” he says with a smile that feels just as fake as it is. “I’m fine. I’m okay.”

“Saw it,” she insists. She looks back at the ceiling, away from him. She pulls a hand free of his and tugs at her shirt. Definitely panic, he decides, and that makes something raw and dangerous twist in his chest. 

“I know, but it wasn’t real.” She shakes her head and that pressure in his chest ratchets itself a little tighter. They’re not best friends, not exactly, because there’s an undertow here that took that off the table right from the start. It’s a riptide, and whatever exactly this disastrous pull is, it’s tumbling Will around and making it impossibly difficult for him to choose his words.

She won't look at him so he moves to sit on the mattress beside her. “It wasn’t real,” he says again. “I’m sitting right here.” She squeezes his hand even though he knows it must hurt but she still doesn’t look at him and he’s suddenly glad for it. He’s afraid of what he knows he’ll see written on her face.

He untangles his hand from hers and soaks the bandana again; he runs it along her throat to try to cool her down a little more. She winces at the contact but he does it anyway because he can feel the heat radiating off of her without even touching her skin. She shivers when he draws it away and whimpers with a sound he hasn’t heard from her since France. She grits her teeth and wipes at her throat with her hand even though it makes her choke back a strangled sound as she does it. He realizes that the sensation of the water cooling on her skin must hurt.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” he says. He realizes he can’t reach out now to stop her without hurting her, however much he’s desperate to. “Shh, no, it’s okay.”

She squeezes her eyes shut but keeps her hand pressed to her throat in an attempt at alleviating the phantom pain.

“Have I ever told you about the time Susan and I almost got arrested when we were in Quantico?” She doesn’t respond and the tension wired through her body doesn’t ease. “I know it’s surprising, but it’s true. We went for drinks one night at one of the local bars. No big deal, nothing out of the ordinary. But this guy in the bar decided he wanted to start a fight. Cracked a bottle over my buddy’s head.” He speaks slowly, calmly, hoping it’ll calm her in turn. “Well he hit the ground like a ton of bricks. He was bleeding all over the floor. Ended up with fifteen stitches in the side of his head. The guy that hit him turned around to hit me. He didn’t know he just picked a fight with a bunch of FBI agents-in-training, one of which had just left the Army, and I was, of course, a Marine.” She’s relaxed a little, enough to watch him as he speaks, so he keeps talking because he can't look away. “Well he swung at me and I dropped him, but he was so drunk he didn’t even seem to feel it. Susan stood up as he got to his feet, and that got his attention, so he swung at her. My buddy and I reached out to grab him but didn’t get ahold of him before Susan had already broken his nose.” He laughs a little at the memory. “If you were there I would’ve just let you have him, but we restrained him and that’s when everything just kind of erupted into an all-out brawl.” 

She’s relaxed enough that her hand is resting on her chest now rather than on her throat and she blinks slowly at him as he pauses in the story. She’s breathing a little more slowly now but she’s still trembling visibly. He wants so badly to reach out and brush her hair away where it’s clinging to her forehead.

He doesn’t.

“Anyway, they called the police, and when they came to break it up they assumed we’d started the whole thing. We had to explain and luckily the bartender backed us up because we were this close to getting arrested,” he says, holding his fingers up very close together. He’s smiling and she smiles in response, just barely, just enough for him to see it. He’s pretty sure she still can’t recall his name, or her own, and that she’s not really following the story anyway, but she still smiles when he does and Will knows that’s just so very dangerous. The moment drags into something fearful that creeps up his neck.

He leans away from where his elbows are on the mattress and the spell snaps like pencil lead. Frankie turns her head to look back up at the ceiling and Will stands. “Try to get some sleep,” he says even though her eyes are already closed.

*****

Light is starting to bleed into the sky when Will hears the crunch of tires on the dirt road. He abandons his game of solitaire and draws his pistol, clicking off his flashlight and moving toward the door. He hears the vehicle stop and he yanks the door open with a quick jerk to minimize the sound. 

Frankie has been unconscious for the past three hours and the only sound behind him is her labored breathing.

He hears footsteps and readies himself by the door frame for when they come into view. 

“Will?” It’s Susan’s voice and Will steps out of the cabin.

“Susan?”

“Will!”

“Are you guys okay?” Jai asks, coming into view around the side of the cabin just off Susan’s shoulder. “We heard you guys get grabbed; we didn’t want to wait for the rendezvous--”

Will interrupts him. “Frankie’s in bad shape.”

Jai’s expression goes hard, a sudden impassiveness overtaking his features. “What happened.”

“They drugged her. I think it’s poisoning her.”

Jai shoves past him into the cabin. Will follows just behind him, clicking on his flashlight. Jai reaches out to press his fingers to her pulse and she flinches away even in unconsciousness. 

“No, don’t-- don’t touch her,” Will says.

“Why?” Susan asks. She puts a hand on Will’s arm and he knows she’s read the distress in his body language that he’s been trying to keep off his face.

“She's in pain,” Will says and as weak of an explanation as it is he can’t muster a better one.

“We need to get out of here before they find us,” Susan says and Will thanks her silently for being so steadfast. 

“Standish is in the car,” Jai says. “It’ll be tight, but we’ll all fit.”

“What happened to the SUV?” Will asks.

“It um…” Jai pauses. “You don’t want to know.”

“Okay. Sure.” Will moves toward Frankie. “Help me with her,” he says to Jai. He shoves both of the bandanas in his vest and slips an arm under her shoulders to sit her up. She moans a sharp sound of protest but doesn’t wake. Will adjusts himself to pull her forward and kicks the tin cup over, spilling water across the floor. Jai grabs her from the other side and together they pull her to the edge of the bed. 

She whimpers at the movement and Will can tell her breathing is even more haggard than it had been a few minutes ago. “It’s okay,” Jai says. “We’ve got you.” Susan picks her vest up where it’s abandoned on the bed. Will can see even in the dim light of the cabin that Jai’s mouth is set in a hard line, clear worry written in the tension in his brow as well.

“Ready?” Will asks.

“Yeah,” Jai answers.

They pick Frankie up between them and carry her out of the cabin, one of them on each side of her, holding on to her with one arm under her shoulders and the other under her knees. It’s awkward with the height difference between Will and Jai but they make it to the car without tripping.

“What is that?!” Will says as he gets a good look at the sedan.

“Look, man,” Standish says out the window, “we didn’t have a lot of time.”

Susan opens the door. 

“Okay,” Jai says, “you just, slide in.” 

Will slides in, still holding onto Frankie and Jai leans forward with them, half dumping her in with Will. “Ow, easy, easy,” Will says.

“It’s not exactly easy, you know,” Jai says.

“Come on you guys, let’s go,” Susan says as she slips back into the driver’s seat.

Jai slides into the back seat next to Will and they manage to settle so that Frankie is mostly settled against Will’s chest with her legs over Jai’s knees.

“Next time,” Jai says, “we’re going to steal a bigger car.” It’s a joke but Will can see the stress in his face as he looks at Frankie. 

The car hits a bump on the road and Frankie winces visibly. Will tightens his arms around her reflexively and Jai holds her legs to keep her from slipping. She groans at the contact and moves her head on Will’s chest. 

“Yeah,” Will says, “I don’t blame you for being a raincloud about this one.”

The car ride is uncomfortably silent and Will knows both he and Jai are listening to Frankie’s unsteady breaths. He knows they left the cabin open behind them with the tin cup knocked over, water on the floor and a solitaire game abandoned on the table. He knows they’re two hours away from the nearest hospital. He also knows they probably won’t be safe there, but there’s no choice. 

They wait and the car is quiet but Will feels like his worry is almost audible in the air, a humming tension beneath the sound of the engine. 

*****

Will is starting to doze off in the chair when Frankie says, “No sleeping on the job.” 

He starts awake and leans forward. “Well you’ve been asleep most of the last forty-eight hours, but not all of us have had that luxury,” he says with a smile that he can't hold back. She smiles back, just a little, but he can still see the discomfort still heavy on her face. It's a real smile, though, and he knows because he's learned to tell the difference. “Still hurting?”

“Not as bad as I was,” she says. He can hear the exhaustion in her voice. “I don’t-- I don’t really remember much of it, but I remember that.”

“That’s probably a good thing.”

“What?”

“Well, you said a lot of things that I, well, I don’t think you normally would’ve said.”

She looks at him skeptically. “No I didn’t.”

“Oh, you did.”

“For a spy you’re a terrible liar.”

He knows she’s just calling his bluff, but he lets her and allows himself to laugh. It's relief and for a brief moment he worries that it sounds too much like it before he decides he doesn't care if she notices. 

“Will, I’m going to hurt you.”

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry. Well, I’m not that sorry.” Her anger is something so familiar that it eases the stress of the past hours in which he’s sat silently at her bedside. He knows he shouldn't be provoking her, but that too is relief. “You’ve got the all clear to go; we’ll stay in a hotel for a couple days so you can rest up until you’re ready to fly home.”

“We? I’m sharing a hotel room with you?”

“You make it sound like a bad thing.”

“It sounds like worse suffering than this,” she says, waving a tired hand in a vague encapsulation of her current feeling.

“You’re not exactly a joy to be cooped up with yourself,” he retorts.

“I’ll mind my own business as long as you don’t make me watch _The Princess Bride_.”

“Oh, you’re watching _The Princess Bride_. I can’t live with myself if I allow you to continue on never having seen it.”

“I’ve seen it. I just don’t remember it.”

“Exactly.” She rolls her eyes. Will stands and moves toward the door. “I’ll see if I can get them to bring your release paperwork.”

“Fine,” she says. She makes it sound reluctant but Will knows she’s just as eager to leave as he is. He rolls his shoulders. He's still wound tight with latent, lingering fear that should have dissipated but is clinging like an aftertaste. He knows he’ll have to unpack all of this later, untangle the stress and pull at it until it's taught and he can understand its source. Or, at the very least, make himself acknowledge it. For now, though, for now he lets it sit because she’s okay, the team is okay, and he’s okay too.

He waits by the door for a nurse to pass so he doesn’t have to leave her with no one to watch her back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Will's next chapter is on deck.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This whole twitter thing has me stressed.
> 
> Anyway, like I said when I started this series, each one shot is very different in format and the general vibe. This one is quite different than all the others.

He blinks awake to complete darkness and coughs out a mouthful of dust.

“Will?” a voice asks.

“Yeah?” he says. He knows his name and he’s sure he knows that voice but he can’t quite place it.

“You okay?” She sounds distant, muffled somehow, and weak.

“I--” He tries to move but something has him pinned. “I can’t move. I can’t move.”

“It’s okay,” she says. It's two simple words but somehow her voice soothes him. “I can’t either.”

“Where are you?” he asks.

“Not sure. It’s too dark.”

“It’s dark?”

“Yeah,” she says. 

“Thank god. I thought I couldn’t see.”

“Are you hurt?” There’s fear in her voice but his realization of that is a fleeting thing.

“Where are we? I was-- I was with my partner, and…” He growls when the memory dissipates like smoke.

“We were in a building. There was a bomb.” She sounds tired. “We’re somewhere under it.”

“Okay,” he says as he tries to parse that. “Okay. My team will come.”

“Yeah,” she says and it sounds dispirited. 

“They will,” he insists. “And my--” he interrupts himself with a gasp, “my partner! Where-- where is she?”

“She’s fine.”

He wants to get up move towards her but he’s not sure why. He can only move his left shoulder; everything else is trapped, his legs pinned tight and a heavy weight just above him that only allows him enough room to breathe. “I can’t-- I’m stuck.” There’s panic edging in. “I’m stuck.”

“I know; so am I,” she says and there’s something brutally calm in her voice. He makes a noise of frustration. “Will,” she snaps and that calm shatters. “Stop moving. _Will_.”

“Yeah.”

“Stop moving, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Listen to me.” Her voice is soft, strained, but still manages to command his attention. “The only hope we have is if the team can get first responders here and they can get to us without bringing the building down. If you keep moving, you could kill us before that happens. You have to stay calm and you have to stay still, okay?” He doesn’t respond. “Will, answer me,” she orders.

“Okay.”

“What did I just tell you.”

“I-- I don’t remember.”

“You have to keep calm and you have to stay still.” She lets a moment pass before she says, “Say it back to me.”

“I have to be calm.”

“And?”

“And stay still.”

“Okay,” she says. A moment of silence drags into something that worries him but he doesn’t know why. “Will, tell me how you feel.”

“I’m… confused.”

“Okay.”

“My head hurts. And my neck.”

“Can you-- can you feel your fingers?”

“I-- yeah.”

“What about your legs?” 

“Yeah. They really _hurt_. There’s something on them.”

“That’s good,” she says with the sound of relief.

“It is?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Don’t worry about it. Does it hurt anywhere else?”

“Uh… everywhere.”

There’s a sound he can barely distinguish from the silence humming in his ears that he thinks might be the barest huff of a laugh from her. 

“Do you…” He loses track of the thought halfway through. 

“What?”

“My partner was-- she was next to me--” he chases the thought, “where is she?”

“She’s fine.”

“She’s okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Thank god.” The silence stretches into something that creeps along his face. He lets it.

**

He wakes up a while later. He doesn’t know how long it is. His head hurts so bad that it’s like a knife is being driven into his forehead, sharp, blinding pain that makes him groan aloud as soon as he’s aware of it.

He hears a faint sound in the silence before the sound of someone clearing their throat. “Will?”

“Yeah?”

“Thank god.”

“What?”

“You need to stay awake.”

“Okay.” He pauses. “Why?”

“You’ll thank me later.”

“Okay.” The silence comes again, heavy and liquid, settling over him. He’s forgotten where he is but it feels like so much effort to ask aloud that he doesn’t bother. He lets time pass around him, thick and languid. “Frankie!” he says suddenly.

“What?”

“She was-- she was next to me-- I thought she was right next to me but she-- I don’t know where she is--”

“Will,” she snaps.

“I don’t--”

“Will, _listen_. Everything is fine. Just stay calm. What did I tell you before?”

“I don’t know.”

“Stay calm and stay still.”

“Right.”

“I--” she breaks off then and the silence hums in Will’s ears again.

“Hey.”

“Tell me how you feel,” she says and he can barely hear her.

“My head really hurts. I’m confused. Don’t know where I am.”

“What do you remember?”

“I was… running, I think. And Frankie was beside me. She was beside me and I turned to look to make sure she was there and then… I don’t know. I don’t know what happened next.”

“The building exploded.”

“Oh.”

She laughs, just a little, but there’s an edge to it. “Yeah. ‘Oh.’”

“My team will be here. My partner-- Frankie’s my partner. She’ll be here.” There’s no response. “Hey,” he says into the darkness. “Hey!” There’s no response.

**

Will drifts in and out of awareness of the pain in his head. He doesn’t know where he is but he stopped caring a while ago.

“Hey,” he says when he remembers that he’d be talking to someone. “Hey,” he says again into the darkness.

“What,” comes the faint response.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she says. And then, “Don’t worry about me.”

“It’s my job to worry about you,” he says on reflex. “I think.”

“No. It’s your job to worry about you.” There’s a moment of silence stretching out like light distorting through glass between them. “You shouldn’t have looked back at me.”

“There’s a myth about that,” he says hazily.

“What?”

“Myth.”

“Yeah, I heard that part.” A pause. Then, faintly, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The guy with the guitar.”

“Will, you’re not making sense.” She sounds worried.

“He charms the god of the underworld to save his love.”

“Stop talking.”

“He wasn’t supposed to look back. But he did.”

“Stop,” she says.

“I don't think it's supposed to be a love story, but it is. Maybe not then, but now.”

“Stop,” she whispers, just loud enough for him to hear.

“I didn’t mean to look back.”

She doesn’t answer.

**

He wakes to her voice. 

“No,” she says, “no! Don’t--” She breaks off with a cry and he realizes that she sounds halfway to hysterical. 

“Sweetie, calm down. Don’t move, okay?”

“Will-- he stopped-- he’s not answering. He’s not answering. He was and now he’s not. You have to go help him.” There’s only a momentary pause, and then, “Go help him!”

“Frankie, stop. Look at-- no-- look at me. Good. They’re going to help him. You have to stay calm.”

“I’m calm,” she growls.

“No you’re not.”

“Sweetie, he’s right. You’re in shock, okay? You guys have been down here for six hours. Even if you were calm earlier, you’re not now.”

“I’m calm. I’m calm. I’m fine.” Just from her voice alone he knows she’s not calm.

“You’re not calm. Jai, switch with me.” There’s movement and then a clatter of rubble and Will sees weak light glowing along a crack in the concrete slabs. “Will? Can you hear me? It’s Susan.”

“Yeah,” he manages.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I think. Hurt my head.”

“Okay. Can you tell Frankie that you’re okay?”

“Frankie’s here? Where is she? I knew she’d come get me.”

“She-- Will, she’s been down here with you this whole time. You’ve been talking to her.”

“Oh. Is she okay?”

“She’s trapped, like you.”

“Okay. But she’s okay?”

Susan pauses so long that fear stirs thick and heavy in Will’s gut.

“Susan?”

Frankie screams. 

“It’s okay,” Jai says, “it’s okay.”

“Frankie?!” Will cries.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Standish says, distant, standing somewhere near where Frankie is.

She lets out an agonized wail that falls just short of a scream this time and it fails into a series of sobs.

“I know,” Jai says. “I know it hurts. It’s okay. You’ll be okay.”

“Frankie?!” Will cries again. “I can’t-- I can’t get out-- Susan!”

“Will, listen to me: stay still. If you move too much you might disturb the rubble. If it shifts at all, it’ll kill Frankie and then it’ll probably kill you too.”

“I don’t-- is she-- is she okay?”

“She’s pinned by a slab of concrete, like you, but she’s really stuck. She’s pinned right to the floor and they’re trying to make sure they can move it without killing her, alright? Which is why you have to stay calm.”

“I want-- I want to-- to see her. Can I see her?”

“No, sweetie, you’re stuck right now. They’re going to come in here and stabilize the rubble. I need to go help Frankie, okay?”

“No, Suze, I need to see her-- I need--.”

“Will,” Susan interrupts, “listen. I can't be in two places at once. I need to go help Frankie, so I need you to be calm. I can't help her if I'm helping you, and she needs me more than you do right now. Focus on staying calm. Can you do that for her?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. Someone is going to come talk to you and ask how you’re feeling. Tell him everything, okay? He’s going to ask you some really specific questions. Don’t worry about any of them, just answer them. Okay?” He doesn’t say anything. “Will, answer me.”

“Okay.”

“Good.”

He hears more rubble skitter and crunch as Susan moves away and someone else moves forward. 

“Hi Will, I’m Steven, I’ll be your paramedic this evening. We’ll start off tonight’s course with some basic questions. How are you feeling?”

“I need-- I need to see Frankie-- I can-- I can hear her, is she okay?”

“She’ll be fine; they’re giving her something for the pain right now and then they’re going to start her IV so they can move her in a little while. Right now I need you to answer my questions. How are you feeling?”

“I just-- I heard her scream-- I need to get out--”

“Will, listen to me. You can’t move, okay? Moving that rubble might kill all of us. They’re working on stabilizing it but they’re not done yet. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“How are you feeling?”

“My head hurts.”

“Okay. Is there anything pinning your head?”

“No. I can turn a little but my neck hurts.”

“Okay, that’s fine. Can you move all your fingers?”

“Yeah.”

“How about your toes?”

“I could, earlier, but my legs are kind of numb.”

“Susan said you told her you were stuck too; is it your legs that are pinned?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. Do you feel like anything’s broken? Do you have pain anywhere besides your head?”

“Can you check on Frankie? I can’t-- I don’t hear her.”

“I’ll check on her in a minute, okay? Answer my question first.”

“What was the question?” 

“Do you have pain anywhere beside your head?”

“No. Just my head. Don’t think I broke anything.”

“Well that’s good, isn’t it?!” Will doesn’t believe the false cheer for a moment.

“Yeah. Check on Frankie.”

“Okay. I’ll be right back. They’re about to move this rubble anyway, so I'll check on her and when I’m back we’ll get to meet face to face.”

He hears Steven move away and then listens listlessly as the men work to move the rubble. He’s losing his ability to focus so he just lets the voices and the noises blend into a singular cacophony that stretches out into indeterminacy. 

Light comes pouring in, unexpected, and Will shuts his eyes against it.

“Hey Will, remember me?”

“No,” he grouses at the disturbance. He knows he sounds like someone but can’t remember who.

“I’m Steven. I’m the paramedic you’re working with tonight.”

“Okay,” he says listlessly.

“I’m just going to slip in here, alright, and we’ll work on a few things.” Steven’s face comes into view and Will looks away from the headlamp that’s shining in his eyes. “Hello there! I’m your maître-d this evening and I’ve brought a complimentary rehydration supply!” Will doesn’t smile at the joke. “The first thing that I’m going to do is give you something for the pain, alright? It’s the same stuff we gave your partner; it’s why she’s quiet now. She’s okay though, and some of the stuff you and I are going to do right now is what they’re doing for her, too.”

“My partner?” he asks groggily.

“Yeah, bud, your partner.”

“Knew she’d come. She tried to kill me once. But she’s got my back. We’re family.” 

“Hey bud? Eyes on me. Yeah, that’s it; good job. I’m going to ask you some more questions, okay? And you’re going to feel a little pinch in a second but just ignore that.”

“Okay.”

“See? Didn’t feel a thing. So. What’s your name?”

“Will.”

“Full name, bud.”

“Will Chase.”

“Nice to meet you, Will Chase. This partner of yours, what’s her name?”

“My partner?”

“Yeah.”

“Shouldn’t tell you her name.”

“You can.”

“Her name is-- is Frankie. It's short… for something. I didn't-- I don't call her by it-- why don't I remember?”

“That’s fine; don't worry. Describe her to me.”

“I-- uh-- ow.”

“Yup, that was the IV. We’re going to just flood your body with fluids, right, same thing we’re doing to your partner.”

“I would’ve preferred a bottle of wine,” Will says drowsily.

“Right? I bet. Me too, but we’ll get by with just this. You tell me about that partner, and I’ll shine this light in your eyes, okay? Don’t look away from it.” Steven puts his hand on Will’s face and holds his eyelid so he can’t blink as the light is shined into his eye. “Tell me about her.”

“She’s--” He searches for words. “Green eyes. Dorky laugh. Snarky.” Steven checks his other eye. “So snarky. Doesn’t throw knives as well as me but beats me in hand-to-hand.”

“Sounds like a keeper.”

“Don’t tell her that. Don’t tell her I said her laugh is dorky, either. She’ll kill me.”

Steven laughs. “Your eyes look good.”

“Thanks. I get a lot of compliments.”

“I bet,” Steven laughs. “Are you starting to feel those painkillers?”

“I dunno.” He squints at the dust that’s sifting through the headlamp’s beam where it starts to haze back into darkness. “I just want to see my partner. She’s okay? I thought-- I remember her screaming. I’ve never heard her scream.”

“She’ll be okay.” Will frowns. “Hey,” Steven says sternly, “stop moving.”

“Oh.” Will hadn’t even realized he’d been moving.

“I’m going to poke you with a bunch more needles, alright? We’re getting you ready so they can get that slab off your legs and airlift you and your partner out of here. Why don’t you tell me more about her?”

“We’re getting airlifted?”

“Yeah bud. Traffic is still kind of ugly right now from rush hour, so they’re just going to take you guys out of here by helicopter.”

“She’ll hate that.”

“Why?”

“She doesn’t like anybody fussing over her.”

“Do you guys get along well?”

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“If we’ve pissed each other off within the last few minutes or not.”

Steven laughs. “So, no?”

“Didn’t say no,” he says faintly.

“Hey bud, stay awake now. I know it’s tempting to fall asleep with those nice painkillers, but I’m going to keep you up a little while longer. You were telling me that you guys aren’t friends.”

“We are friends. We’re family.”

“Known each other a long time?”

“No. Less than a year.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. With what we do it’s long enough.”

“To get to know each other?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re only friends?”

“It’s… complicated. Don’t tell her I said that. She’d punch me. Somewhere it would hurt.”

Steven laughs. “You’re into her.”

“It’s not like that,” he grouses.

“Yeah it is,” Steven says. 

“Yeah it is,” Will agrees foggily. 

“There’s the painkillers,” Steven laughs. “It’s okay. I won’t tell her.”

“I should.”

“Probably.”

“Been waiting for her.”

“Hey, hey. Yeah, look at me. What for?”

“What?”

“You said you’re waiting for her? Why?”

“Don’t want to scare her.”

“Ah. You’re a lot?”

“Yeah,” Will sighs. “But so’s she,” he says defensively.

“I’m sure,” Steven laughs.

“We’re friends. I don’t want to mess that up.”

“Yeah, bud, I get that.”

“Will?” It’s Susan, making her way over the rubble. “Can I talk to him?”

“Yeah,” Steven says.

“Will, I have Frankie on the phone. When I unmute it I want you to talk to her, okay? Tell her you’re okay. They’ve sedated her but I need you to calm her down until it takes effect.”

“Is she okay?”

“She’ll be okay. She’s just really confused and she wants to know that you’re okay.”

“She was fine earlier.”

“No, she sounded fine.” Susan crouches beside him in the narrow space. “She’ll be okay, but she’s hurt and she’s confused and she’s drugged and it’s making it really hard for her to understand that you’re okay. That’s what she’s concerned about, sweetie, that you’re okay. I just want you to distract her for a minute until the sedative takes effect. I know you’re confused too, but do you think you can do that for me?”

“Of course I can,” he says grumpily. “I’d do anything for her.”

“I know, sweetie.”

“Susan?” Jai says, his voice clear on speakerphone.

She unmutes the call. “Yeah. I have Will.”

“Will?” Frankie says. Even though Will is pretty confused himself he can tell how disoriented she is just in the way she says his name.

“Hey you.”

“You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m okay. Still a little stuck.”

She makes a sound that was maybe supposed to be a laugh but sounds to pained to be really humorous. “Me too.”

“Are you okay?”

“Dunno. Am I okay?” she asks.

“Yeah,” Standish says, “you’re okay.”

“I’m okay,” she says.

Will smiles. He’s starting to forget what they were talking about but the sound of her voice is a comfort. “Did you still want to go get pizza later?”

“Eh,” she says noncommittally.

“You owe me a raincheck.”

“No I don’t.”

“Yes you do. I asked you and Susan to dinner last week and you both said you were busy. But you went dancing. Both of you. Without me.”

“It was girls’ night,” she grouses.

“But you didn’t say that. So you owe me a raincheck.” He starting to find it difficult to keep his eyes open, so he lets them close.

“I didn’t agree to that,” she says drowsily.

“It’s date etiquette. You can’t ghost me.”

“Wasn’t a date.”

“Sure it was.”

“You invited Susan.”

“It was a friendship date.”

“That’s not a thing.”

“Like I’d ask you on a real date,” Will huffs.

“Like I’d say yes,” she huffs right back.

“We'll go get pizza later,” Will says hazily. 

“Okay,” Frankie says, so faint it's almost inaudible. 

The silence on the line drags out, starting to lull Will into something almost resembling peace. “Susan, she's out,” Jai says. 

Susan pats Will's shoulder but he hardly feels it. “Good job,” she says. And then to Jai, “And so's Will.”

The last thing he hears is Steven say, “Did they just argue with each other until they fell asleep?”

“Yup,” Susan says. “I knew that would work.”

“Sounds like a match made in heaven,” he says. 

“You have no idea.”

**

He wakes up once or twice as he's moved, his neck immobilized and his body strapped to a backboard. He hears Susan's voice beside him and tries to ask where Frankie is because the last thing he remembers is her voice, but the words all bleed together and come out as a groan instead. 

Susan hears him, though. She squeezes his hand as they carry him out of the debris. “She's fine. So are you. Everything is okay now.”

He'd nod if he wasn't strapped to the board so he settles for squeezing her hand. 

**

“If you don't give me the remote, I'll break your hand.”

“But I want to see what happens next!”

“What happens next is I kill you and _take_ the remote.”

“Frankie, please, _Downton Abbey_ is critically acclaimed.”

“It's boring and it sucks.”

Susan and Ray step into the room. “Wow, should we come back?”

“No,” Frankie says, “because I'm less likely to kill him with witnesses.”

Ray looks at her skeptically. “No you're not.”

“No I'm not,” she agrees. “Give me the remote, Will.”

“Fine. I'll change the channel.”

“Thank you,” she sighs, relaxing against the pillows and closing her eyes. 

“Oh. Oh yes.”

She opens her eyes in alarm. “Will,” she snaps. “We’re _not_ watching _Frozen_.”

“Yes we so are.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Yes we are. I think you should just admit you're beat and…” he looks over at her, “ _let it go_.”

She glares at him but he just smiles, knowing she’s far too sore to get out of bed to hit him.

“Well, I’m not watching _Frozen_ ,” Ray says. “Bye guys.”

“I’ll murder you,” Frankie says. “You can’t make me watch stupid princess movies if I murder you.”

“No, see, this is such a great movie. It’s about family. And it’s cute!”

“ _So_ cute,” Susan agrees. “Bye! See you guys tomorrow.”

“Susan,” Frankie pleads, but she’s already gone. She looks at Will again. “I know where you sleep,” she says, chillingly calm.

“Uh, yeah, right here, at the moment,” he says, pointing to himself laying on his own bed. “Oh! See? I love this part!” He doesn’t really expect the pillow to the face. He makes a sound, part surprise, part outrage, part disgust. “That’s-- eugh-- I just got pillowcase in my mouth. Ugh. It tastes like cheap soap.”

Frankie’s on her side, face buried in the crook of her elbow as she laughs silently. Her other hand is gripping the sheets so tightly her knuckles are bloodless and he knows it’s because of how badly it must hurt her to laugh like that. 

“Thanks for the extra pillow,” he says with a smile.

“No. You can’t keep it,” she growls as she catches her breath. 

“Yes I can. Pillowfight rules of combat clearly dictate that he-- or she -- who emerges victorious with the pillow shall keep it.”

“That’s not-- you’re a dork.” He’s still holding the pillow. “If you don’t give me that I’m going to come get it.”

Will’s still smiling until she swings her legs off the side of the bed.

“Stop it,” he snaps and she looks at him with defiance written all over her face. He pushes himself to the edge of the bed and eases himself onto his feet. 

“Will,” she says in warning. 

He locks his knees and makes sure his IV isn’t tangled at all in the bed before stiffly hobbling the few short steps over to her. She puts her hand up and catches him palm-to-palm, lacing their fingers together as she tries to steady him. Taking the force of his weight as he wobbles makes the lines of tension in her face draw tight as she tries to mask the pain. Will lets go of her hand and grips the bed frame, using his free hand to help her sit up a little so he can then drop the pillow behind her back again. She rests against it, lips pressed tight against the pain of movement, looking up at him as he moves. Will shifts again, putting his hands on the bed to steady himself, one hand accidentally over where hers is resting, palm up. 

“Was hitting me with a pillow worth all that pain?”

She glares at him. “Yes.”

She’s going just as stir-crazy as he is, cooped up in here, he knows. She looks more comfortable now, at least, snuggled into the FBI sweatshirt she’d poached from him yesterday with the extra blanket he’d sweet-talked the nurse into bringing for her wrapped around her sore torso. She’s got the sleeves of his sweatshirt pulled over her hands now but he can see the tube of her IV trailing from one of them. 

Will shrugs. “At least I’m allowed to walk around,” he says as he hobbles back to his bed. 

“Yeah, with a walker like an old man. If that’s what you call walking. You look like bambi.”

“Bambi!”

“No,” she says flatly.

“Oh, but it’s cute! Sad though.” She huffs. He settles back in his bed and tries to sit so that he can ignore the ache in his legs. His thighs are startlingly blue, still, the bruising not having started to fade into blacks or greens or yellows yet. He’s seen the bruises on Frankie’s torso, though, the damage so severe it had almost landed her on dialysis as the damaged cells had started leaching toxins into her blood as soon as she was free from the concrete slab that had caused it in the first place. He’d been sedated through all of that, his own body wreaking a more mild form of the same havoc on him, and had only woken when she was stable and already beginning to recover. Knowing that makes him less frustrated by how sore he still is and how limited his movement is as his quads refuse to function normally.

Will turns off the tv. “We should go to sleep anyway.”

“Oh,” she says.

He looks at her in surprise. “You wanted me to leave it on?”

“ _No_ \-- well, I mean, I don’t want to watch _Frozen_ , but the background noise is nice so I don’t have to listen to annoying people in the hall.”

Will smiles. “You like _Frozen_.”

“No I _don’t_. It’s not even funny. It’s just dumb.”

“I’ll leave it on until you fall asleep,” he says with a smile. She glares at him for a moment longer before closing her eyes. “I can’t believe you like _Frozen_.”

“Shut up, Bambi.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do these two realize they're dating, or is Susan going to need to hreak it to them?
> 
> Reviews give me motivation. Seriously. Please. Motivate me.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We've had two focused on Frankie, two focused on Will, so what naturally follows?

The hallway is hazy with a white smoke she hardly notices with the way the floor is tilting precariously in her vision, an impossibility of physics as it bucks and warps beneath her steps. She has a hand pressed to the wall to try to steady herself, a reflex rather than a decision, but it does little to help her as she stumbles forward with the inside of her opposite elbow pressed to her face as she struggles to breathe. It feels like her lungs are burning as the smoke invades her chest and leaves a caustic, bitter taste coating her tongue and the roof of her mouth. 

She's looking for something. She doesn't remember what. 

The wall ends and she staggers across the intersection of hallways, trying to keep the floor stable beneath her. Something dark flickers in the corner of her eye; she turns, stumbling a step backwards to keep her balance as the motion disorients her further. That step isn't enough room away from the figure that strikes out at her and she takes the hit to the side of her head. 

It doesn't hurt much, but it sends her directly to the floor in a tangle of limbs that she suddenly no longer has the energy to extricate herself from. The figure is still in view, a tall lean shape in dark clothes and indistinct lines, looking down at her from the clear face of a gas mask.

**

He's looking for something. He doesn't remember what. 

He's stumbling through the hallways, endless corridors of white that are twisting and folding around him as he bumps into the walls like a disoriented pinball. 

He reaches an intersection and blinks at the brightness, shuffling forward until his foot bumps something and he finds himself face-down on the floor a moment later without any awareness of having fallen. 

He sits up as the other person pushes themselves onto their hands and knees. He tries to blink away his confusion and then he's flat on his back, pressing a hand to his face where the other person just punched him.

“Ow!” he says. “What was that for?” he slurs.

She just groans, pressing her palms back to the cold floor and tucking her chin to her chest with her eyes tightly shut. 

“You just punched me,” he slurs in disbelief. He blinks then, sitting back into a more comfortable position, hand still pressed to his face.

“You’re fine,” she mutters dismissively. “Just… surprised me.”

“Ugh,” he says.

She drops from her hands to her elbows and he leans sideways, steadying himself with a hand.

“It’s--” she starts to say before she’s sinking the rest of the way to the floor, cheek pressed to the tile. He feels himself falling, a sensation carrying him a further distance than just the space between his face and the floor as he crashes down.

**

The first thing he realizes is that the floor is covered in blood. He opens his eyes to it, a puddle thick and edging outward across the white tiles. There are flecks of gray too, in the tile, like quartz paved smooth into the floor. He traces the edges and curves of the pieces until the blood catches his attention again.

The second thing he realizes is that it’s his blood on the floor. It’s on his face, in his mouth, running over his lips and over his chin and down his throat. It tastes dark and bright at the same time and smells bitter and warm like sunbaked metal. He pushes himself up on shaking hands until his shoulders are off the floor and when he sees the blood smearing at the edges he knows it’s his.

The third thing he realizes is that it’s her blood on the floor too. It’s on her face, running over her lips and over her chin and down her throat. Her eyes are still closed and he leans away from her. 

He doesn’t think he knows her but she’s the only other person in sight. 

He reaches out and puts his hand on her arm, fingers trembling, hoping the touch will wake her.

Her eyes open and he learns immediately that he was wrong to want that. 

She barely manages to push herself off the floor before her wild swing connects with his face. It’s uncoordinated but packs enough force to send him sprawling back onto the tile.

“Ugh,” he says. 

She presses her palms to the tiles and forces herself into a sitting position. 

"I was just trying to help," he mumbled, hand pressed to his eye. The words are a little hazy but he thinks they're probably clear enough for her to understand. 

" _Don't,_ " she says, "touch me."

"Are you okay?"

She just looks at him, still leaning a bit sideways like she isn't quite sure which way is up either, and squints suspiciously. 

He frowns at her silence. "I'm fine too, thanks for asking," he says. 

She ignores him and looks around. "Where are we?" 

"Dunno. Was hoping you knew," he says. She shakes her head. "I--" he pauses then. "What's your name?"

She looks at him again when she registers the fear that sits just below the surface of that question. She considers, just for a moment, before he sees her expression shift to one of alarm. "I don't know," she says. 

"Me neither," he admits. "My name or yours," he clarifies before she can ask. 

He sniffs and realizes as there's suddenly blood in his mouth that it was a poor decision. He touches a hand to his face as though he needs the confirmation that his nose is bleeding again. She scoots toward him on the floor, brow furrowed in concern, and reaches for the vest he didn't realize he was wearing, pulling open a pocket and handing him the bandana that was stowed inside. He presses it to his nose and studies her. 

"Thanks," he says. She doesn't reply; she just watches him with a guarded expression. "How did you know where that was?" he asks because he's suddenly sure she's thinking the same thing but equally as sure that she won't ask the question aloud. 

"I don't know," she says, her voice as guarded as her expression. 

"You know me."

"No I don't." She says it so quickly that he frowns at her. 

"You must." His voice is muffled by the bandana but his eyes are fixed on hers. She looks away. "Yours," he says, "is right here." He pokes the pocket of her vest and she feels the touch even through the layers of fabric. 

"No it isn't."

"Yes it is."

She raises her eyebrows at him. "It's not." He reaches for the Velcro and she smacks his hand away. "Don't touch me," she snaps. 

"Sorry." He keeps the bandana pressed to his face for a moment. "You don't remember anything about how we got here?"

"No."

"Me neither. Was hoping you knew that too," he admits. 

"We should try to find a way out."

He nods in agreement. "Yeah." Neither of them try to get up. "Don't you think it's… weird--"

"No," she says drily.

He continues without batting an eye, "--that we've been sitting here all this time and haven't heard… anything? No other people? Something obviously…" he trails off, then, looking at the blood on the floor before looking up and studying the blood on her face. He takes the bandana away and pats absentmindedly at his nose a few times without looking away from her, seemingly lost in thought. 

She glares at him but he doesn't seem to notice. "Something happened," she agrees, stiffly. "Obviously."

He blinks himself back into focus. "We need to figure out what it was."

"No, we need to get out of here."

"After we figure out what happened," he insists. "I just… I feel like we need to know. And I think you do too." She frowns. "As soon as we have answers, we're out of here. Wherever this is. Deal?"

"No. But if we find something while looking for a way out, fine."

He sighs, and for some reason knows that's as good as he's going to get. He must know her. He feels like he knows her. 

He shoved his bandana back into his pocket and pushes himself up onto his hands and knees. The tile is cool beneath his hands and for a moment he thinks about how nice it would be just to stay on the floor. He pushes himself up anyway so his feet are mostly beneath him; he staggers as the hall tilts and she reaches up to steady him. He ends up standing with his legs braced apart, gripping her vest at the shoulders and trying not to fall over backwards. 

It passes, somewhat, after a moment, and he releases his grip on her. He's still not sure if he's standing up straight or not, but she staggers to her feet beside him and he grabs her vest again as she starts to fall sideways. 

"You okay?" he says. He's disoriented now, the confused clarity of a few minutes ago dissolving every time he tries to grasp at it. 

"Fine," she says. "Let's go."

They shuffle down the hallway unsteadily, his arm around her shoulders and hers around his waist, using their weight against each other to keep themselves standing. 

"All the hallways look the same," he says. 

"Yeah. No signs."

"That would just be too easy. Let's go left."

"Why?"

"It's closer."

She huffs, a vague amusement or a vague irritation he isn't sure. 

They shuffle toward the hallway and begin moving toward a door on the right-hand side. She stops, so suddenly that he loses his balance and almost sends them both to the floor. She presses her palm to her temple with a grimace. 

"Still okay?" he asks. 

"Yeah," she says. "Just… got a pain in my head."

He hears a soft _pat_ in the quiet hallway and looks around for the source of the noise. The lights in the ceiling are buzzing, but there's no other sound. He looks up at the ceiling and wonders why there's no hum of equipment or rush of moving air. He hears the sound again and looks down to see spots of blood on the floor. She keeps her eyes tightly shut as he pulls her bandana free of her vest. She presses it to her face with a grimace. 

They start moving forward again and he opens the door. It's a storage closet. "Great," he mutters. There's nothing but cleaning supplies, and they're not even suspicious-looking cleaning supplies. 

"We should keep moving," she says. 

"Yeah." She shuts the door behind them and they move further, toward a door a few strides down the hall on the opposite side. 

It's a bigger room, empty. 

So is every other room in the hall. 

They're almost at the junction where it turns when he feels a sharp pain in the side of his head, making him flinch like he's been struck. It's a cold sort of pain, gripping the side of his head like the pressure of a hand. His ear rings and his jaw aches. He feels her grasp his arm with her free hand and she's still holding him like that when it finally begins to abate into a duller pain. 

"You okay?" she asks.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm okay."

They turn left again at the end of the hall and there are more doors. Two are empty. A third is an office of some kind, a metal desk in the middle and filing cabinets against the wall. The cabinets are locked, but the desk isn't. 

They start opening drawers. She works on one side while he works on the other. "There's so many files," he mutters, "and somehow none of them are helpful. Anything over there?"

She releases her grip on the desk and sits heavily on the floor. 

"Hey," he says. "What's wrong?"

She's staring past him, dully, unfocused and seemingly unaware that he's talking to her. 

“Hey,” he says again. He kneels and puts his hands on her shoulders. He vaguely remembers something about being punched but dismisses it. She blinks and the spell seems to dissolve slowly. Her nose is bleeding. 

She focuses on him after a long minute, looking at him with confusion and trying to shrug his hands free of her shoulders. 

“It’s just me,” he says. She looks at him like that statement is meaningless. “This is getting worse,” he says aloud, not to her but rather to the open air. “Okay.” He pulls himself up straighter with a grip on the desk and pulls a pen free of the cup. He writes on the back of his hand before he looks back up at her. “Give me your hand.” She seems to debate with herself for a moment before she does. When he lets go he puts the pen in his vest and watches as she reads it.

_He’s your ally.  
You’re looking for a way out._

She looks up at him again. “We’re going to forget,” he says.

“We already did,” she says.

“Yeah.” He holds a hand out in case he needs to steady her as she manages to get her legs beneath her and pull herself to her knees. “Help me look through the drawers. For anything that might help us.”

She nods. “I remember we were looking.”

**

She doesn’t know how to explain what happened, so she doesn’t.

She’d seen him, laughing. Somewhere she doesn’t remember, but somewhere familiar. Blurry and indistinct, right but wrong in the way a dream is. She’d been happy.

She doesn’t remember why. She also doesn’t remember if that was real, or if it was just her mind desperately grasping at something to fill all the spaces left behind by disorientation. 

There’s nothing of use in the drawers, just expense reports and payment records. She pulls one free of the folder it was in. “These are… chemicals,” she says. He looks over her shoulder at them. “I’ve never heard of half of them.” She folds it up and puts it in a pocket of her vest. 

“You think we’ll need that?”

“They’re doing something with these. What if it’s what they did to us?”

“Yeah,” he says but it’s distracted. 

She looks up at him and he’s unfocused, looking past her. “Okay,” she says, “let’s go. Come on.”

Even leaning on each other, it’s hard to both stay upright and move forward. She’s struggling to put one foot in front of the other and she can’t remember if it was this hard before but his weight is pulling her even more severely off balance than she was already.

“We’ll try the next door,” she says, just for something to say. That feels odd to her, the need to interrupt the silence. She feels like it should be him speaking, not her.

He doesn’t respond. His chin is on his chest and he’s watching his feet as he shuffles along with her. Until he seems to lose any ability to hold his own weight and slams her into the floor with him as he falls.

She grunts under the impact but is so dazed by it that for a moment she can’t figure out what happened. She rolls out from under his weight and shoves him until he’s on his side. She doesn’t get up.

“You okay?” she asks, her hand on his shoulder.

He opens his eyes and blinks at her but she can tell he’s not seeing her. She studies his face for a long minute before he starts focusing on her. He looks so familiar. He smiles when he finally looks at her. She can tell he’s dazed and befuddled, but he still smiles.

This feels so familiar.

He feels so familiar. 

The smile melts into a clearer sort of confusion and she turns his hand so he can read the back of it. “That’s my handwriting,” he says slowly.

“Yeah.”

“Huh.” He studies his hand; she’s still holding it turned towards him. “I’m married?!” he says in disbelief. She looks at his ring. “Who am I married to? I forgot my _wife_?!” He looks at her. “I forgot my _wife_ ,” he says. “I don’t even remember getting married.”

He sounds so morose that she takes pity on him and holds up her own hand so he can see the ring she'd noticed on her own hand a while ago. “Me neither,” she says. “Come on.” She pushes herself up so she’s sitting and helps him sit up too.

He looks like he’s about to cry. “I forgot my wife,” he says again. She’s pretty sure he’s delirious, but she’s also struggling to think straight so she can’t really hold it against him.

“I’m sure she didn’t forget you,” she says.

“What if she did,” he says miserably. It makes her doubt.

“We should keep looking.”

“Yeah,” he agrees and they struggle to their feet. 

**

She feels like they've been walking forever. They've found nothing.

The ceiling lights are haloed, a strange effect dancing around them as the floor sways beneath their feet. She feels like she's on fire, her skin prickling and crawling at the friction of her shirt against it. Her palms are slick with sweat and the back and chest of her shirt are damp with it. Her ally, whoever he is, looks about as well as she feels. His face is flushed and his eyes unfocused.

“I need to stop,” she finally mumbles, but it's on the way to the floor that she says it. He tries to arrest some of her downward momentum; it just pulls him down with her. The floor is cold against her cheek and she tries to enjoy the feeling but the sensation is something close to brutal.

“We're not gonna make it out of here,” he says.

“Yes we are,” she mumbles. 

“I don’t see how we can.”

“We will.”

“I’m the optimistic one. Are you arguing with me just to argue?”

“No.”

“Are you saying ‘no’ just to argue?”

“Would you just shut the hell up?” she grouses, with a little more energy.

He smiles at that, tiredly. “Are you sure we’re not married?” he asks.

“Pretty sure,” she says in a tone that translates to, “absolutely.”

He pulls the pen from his vest. “Gimme your hand.”

“Why?” she grunts but does without hesitation. 

_Papers in her pocket_ , he writes. “If anyone unfriendly comes, they'll probably just kill us. But if someone comes to help us, they might need what’s on that list.”

“How long have we been walking?” she asks.

He looks at his watch. “An hour and twenty-six minutes since we woke up.”

“You timed it?” she says faintly.

“Yeah,” he sighs. “Dunno how long we were unconscious, though.”

“Feels longer,” she says.

“Yeah,” he agrees.

Everything starts fading into a dark haze before she even closes her eyes. 

**

He watches her. He’s got nothing else to do, so he stays on the floor, tries to hold on to the few bits of knowledge he’s accumulated in the past hour and forty minutes, and watches her.

He knows they need to get out. 

He knows they probably can't get out.

He knows something happened to them.

He knows his head hurts almost unbearably.

He knows this woman next to him, whoever she is, means a lot to him. Maybe everything. He gets a funny feeling in the pit of his stomach whenever she looks at him, something that feels an awful lot like happiness. He feels fear, now, because whatever is happening is happening to both of them, but she’s experiencing it first and that makes him worry that however little time he might have, she might have less. He doesn't know if it’s because she’s smaller than him or maybe that she was gassed first.

He gasps aloud at the thought, the sound loud in the quiet hallway. He remembers now that the halls had been filled with smoke, something caustic and bitter, and he’d definitely inhaled a lot of it.

He digs the pen out of his vest again and writes _gas?_ on his hand beneath everything else.

He stows the pen and lets his head rest on the tile again. Even the action of reaching for his vest just now has left him exhausted. His limbs feel like jello and he aches all over.

She stirs beside him and he thinks she’s waking up. He reaches out and brushes her hair out of her face. Her hands are trembling, he realizes, and her thumbs are tight across her palms, her fingers stiff. He pushes himself onto his hip, as close to sitting up as he can manage. 

“Wake up,” he says as he reaches out to touch her arm. 

Her nose is bleeding again. When he closes his hand around her bicep, he can feel even through the fabric of her jacket how tight her muscles are, trembling under the stress. She jerks against the floor, turning her head away from him, and he lets go of her immediately. He digs the pen out of his vest. The adrenaline of worry and fear quells some of his exhaustion and he keeps looking between her and his watch as he times the seizure. She’s quiet and mostly still, only moving occasionally as her body jerks. 

She relaxes slowly and as she pants to catch her breath he writes the time on her wrist. _3’50”_.

It’s another few minutes before she starts to wake.

“Okay?” he says. He’s struggling to stay conscious. 

“Feel like shit,” she whispers.

He puts the pen and his watch in her hand. “We have to time them,” he says. 

“What?” He doesn’t like how confused she seems.

He holds her hand closed around the watch. “We have to time the seizures. They’ll need to know how long they are.”

“What?” she says again.

“Just do it,” he says, not out of irritation but rather because he’s rapidly losing consciousness.

**

She’s not really sure what’s going on. She’s trying to hold on to what he’s told her, but her head is blazing with pain and all she can taste and smell is blood. It’s all over her.

She’s somewhere close to unconscious when his hand tightens around hers. She opens her eyes to look at him and sees the watch in her hand and tries to grasp at what he’d said. 

She pulls her hand free and watches the display on the watch tick upward. He’s quieter than she expected, just jerking occasionally against the floor, stiff and straining. When he’s finally relaxed again she writes the time on his wrist where he’d written hers. _3’12_ ”.

She pulls him onto his side with her hands gripping his vest and a heel hooked behind his knee to force him over. He starts to stir at the motion but doesn’t wake for another few minutes. 

There’s something about him that makes her chest ache with fear. Not fear of him, by any means, but rather fear for him. It’s a constricting pressure telling her that under absolutely no circumstances is she willing to lose him. That sets off alarm bells within her somewhere, raising a flag of concern because there’s a discordance there, for some reason. She isn’t sure why.

She runs a hand over his hair to try and soothe some of the confusion that’s showing on his face. 

“You’re okay,” she says as he blinks at her.

“Yeah,” he breathes. There’s blood all over his face again, shining on his teeth. He reaches out his left hand to grip hers. 

The watch reads two hours, but she doesn't remember what that means.

**

He wakes to someone rolling him onto his back.

“Papers in her pocket? What does that mean? Brian, look at this.”

He tries to blink, but there’s blood in his eyes. 

“Stay still, okay?” someone says. He tries to blink them into focus through the red haze across his vision. All he sees is a blob of orange. The blob moves closer and he realizes it’s someone in a HazMat suit. He presses himself instinctively back against the floor. “It’s okay. I know we look pretty scary. I'm Greg; the guy next to you is Brian. Which one of you is Agent Chase and which is Agent Trowbridge?”

“Dunno,” he says. 

“Dunno?" Brian repeats. "Well, we don’t know either. We don’t have a lot of info yet, so you’re going to have to help us out.”

“I found the papers,” Greg says.

“What’s on them?” Brian asks.

“Expense report. For chemicals. This is some nasty shit.”

“What happened here?” Brian asks.

He shakes his head. He just wants to go back to sleep. 

“Greg,” Brian says, “check her wrist.” Brian lifts his hand to study the back of it again, then flips it over, palm up, so he can read his wrist. “Can you tell me what these times are?” He just blinks at them.

“She’s got them too. 3’50”, 4’47”, 6’11”.”

“He’s only got two. 3’12” and 5’06”. Can you tell me what these mean?”

He hands Brian the watch. Brian shows it to Greg. “Three hours? Three hours since what?”

“It’s still counting up,” Greg says.

“Three hours since they were gassed,” Brian realizes. “We need to know what these other times are.”

He just closes his eyes.

“Okay, let’s get a blood sample, then, and we’ll start an IV. Hope you don’t mind being poked and prodded.”

He feels his hands start to tense up. He can’t speak. 

“Greg,” Brian snaps, “he’s starting to seize. Give me that watch.”

“They were timing them,” Greg says. “That’s what the times on the wrists are.”

He blacks out.

**

“Good news,” a man says, “I brought McCulloch those blood samples and the papers from her vest and he said he just got an update: he’s Chase, she’s Trowbridge.”

“Well that’s good,” another man says drily, “at least we know what to call them.”

Their voices sound weird, almost distorted, and she blinks to try to chase away the red haze across her vision. They just look like orange blobs and one kneels beside her to reveal a man looking at her from inside HazMat suit.

“How are you feeling?” he asks. She doesn’t know how to answer. “That’s okay, your partner wasn’t very chatty either. I’m Greg, that’s Brian over there. We’ve still got more poking and prodding to do with you guys, so do your best to stay still.” She feels her fingers touch something on the tile and Greg’s gloved hand pulls them away. “Don’t touch that; it’s your IV. You guys both have a really low blood volume, so we had to set them in your leg where we could get a vein. I know it’s probably uncomfortable, but you can’t touch it.”

She struggles to raise a hand to rub at her eye and her fingers come away bloody. 

“Here,” Greg says, “close your eyes.” She does, more by coincidence than obedience, and he wipes a wet piece of gauze across her eyes to clean some of the blood away. “That should feel better,” he says. 

She turns her head, looking for him. 

He’s laid out beside her on the floor like he’d fallen dead. She reaches out but can’t quite touch him. She makes a sound that doesn’t seem like it had come from her. It’s frustration and concern and fear and Greg puts a hand on her shoulder.

“Your partner's fine. He’s okay.” She shoves his hand away. “Stay calm,” he says in what she thinks he assumes is a calming tone. “We’re getting ready to transport you guys, but we have to keep you quarantined, so it’s going to take some time. We have all kinds of stuff that’s on its way that’s going to help us treat you guys in the meantime. Something to bring the fever down, some ice packs, something to hopefully stop the seizures. It’ll still suck a little, but it’ll suck less than it does right now, right?”

There’s a weird halo dancing around the ceiling lights. She chokes on blood that’s draining from her sinuses into her mouth. 

“Brian,” Greg says to get his attention. 

Her chest hurts as the muscles tighten. She thinks of her partner, her friend, her _something_ laid out on the floor beside her and feels the terror sink a little deeper. It’s like a blanket, damp and heavy. 

“Tell McCulloch to hurry the fuck up with those meds,” Brian says after the staticky chirp of a radio.

She blacks out a little bit into the seizure.

When she comes to she can’t feel much of anything besides the burn of the ice packs behind her neck, on her throat, the insides of her elbows, behind her knees, over her wrists. It takes all of her focus to knock one away, and even then it’s still touching her wrist.

“If you don’t leave that on, I’ll tape it to you,” Brian says. It’s not harsh, just rushed and strained. 

“The tox screens are going to take too long,” another voice says. 

“I know. We’ll move them as soon as the truck gets here,” Brian says.

There’s a butterfly touch against her fingertips. She reaches out, just a little farther, until they’re touching. He’s scared. So’s she.

“McCulloch, hand me those ice packs by your foot. These aren’t doing enough. They’re going to have multiple organ failure before we can even get them to the fucking hospital if we can’t cool them down.”

Brian’s voice is annoying her, so she lets it slip around her like water cutting past. She lets something else pull at her, a feeling, a memory, maybe. His fingertips press against hers. 

“I made a playlist,” he says, a lifetime away.

“You’re disgusting.”

“You love it.”

“You’re insane,” she’d laughed. She can feel the ghost of it heavy in her chest. He’d laughed too and the echo of the sound would maybe make her smile if she could feel her face.

“She’s not breathing,” Greg says. 

She feels fine. His fingertips are pressing mercilessly against hers.

“We don’t have the equipment for this,” Brian growls. Someone presses something to her face. She doesn’t like the feeling. “McCulloch, get ready; he’ll be right behind.”

His fingertips are pressing hers hard against the tile.

She blacks out.

**

He wakes up groggy and confused. There’s an opaque plastic sheeting all around him that feels constricting, like it’s pressing in further and further to suffocate him. He tries to turn over on the bed. All of this is familiar but somehow still confusing.

“Will,” she whispers. He turns his head against the pillow to look at her. “It’s okay.” She smiles, a faint, tired thing. Green eyes almost blue in the sallow light. “We’re still in quarantine.”

“I feel less awful,” he says. He tries reaching for the memories. The ride here is still gone, but when he stretches enough he can almost recall the first few hours of being here, tests and more tests until they figured out if it was safe to sedate them, and then they did. An update, later, that the compound and the gas was secured. A small solace while they continued to suffer, at least. Mission accomplished. 

“They identified the gas with those papers," she says. "Figured out a treatment.” Her voice is soft with exhaustion. The light above the plastic is shattered into a rainbow over the top of it, muted colors shining through on her skin, diffracted further in the clear tube of the oxygen cannula across her face. 

“Good.”

"Couldn't fix that black eye I gave you, though."

"Funny."

“Brian said we’ll still be stuck here awhile. If you wanted a sleepover, you could’ve just said so,” she whispers.

He’s still confused, but Frankie’s smile he knows.

“If I wanted a sleepover, I would’ve worked a lot harder to impress you than this,” he whispers back.

She raises her eyebrows. “Really.”

“Really.” He waves a vague hand, wrist still resting on the bed, little more than a twitch of his fingers. “This is all very drab. I would’ve brought Spanish wine. And music.” He’s so tired.

“Not another playlist.”

“That was a good playlist.”

“You’d have to try harder than that to romance me.”

“Your idea of romance is a bottle of tequila,” he counters.

“At least my idea of romance isn’t a playlist with Taylor Swift on it.”

“Your hatred of T-Swift upsets me.”

“Your bad taste in music irritates _me_ ,” she says.

He laughs, just a breath. She smiles.

“The wine _was_ good, though. Go back to sleep,” she says.

“So it is a sleepover,” he says.

"What, you want me to paint your toenails and give you a facial?"

"That's not quite what I had in mind."

“Maybe later.”

“Raincheck, then.”

“Go back to sleep, Whiskey.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. This is the delightful part about fanfic-- it gives you more room to work. Are they actually married? Is it just a cover they haven't completely shed? You tell me. 
> 
> There's a natural progression here, I think, and we're about to hit the +1. Soon.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well. The last one.

He doesn't look at her. She doesn't look away from him. Both are necessary. 

Frankie figures they'd decided to try him first not because they think they can break him, but because they think they can break her. That she's more likely to give them the information they're asking for because her feminine sensibilities won't allow her to watch them beat her partner. 

They've got another thing coming and Will knows that as well as she does. 

It doesn't mean she loves him any less, and they both know that. 

She sits silently and waits it out. They've both been handcuffed this whole time and he's hooked by the chain to a cable strung across the ceiling beams, his arms taking his weight and the toes of his boots dragging on the floor. His wrists are shining with blood. One of the men beats him like he’s a punching bag strung up to see how hard the guy can hit. Will takes every punch without any more than the occasional stifled grunt. He doesn't even talk at them like she knows he wants to, like he always does. 

"What I have asked of you is very simple," Karlov says to both of them.

Frankie wants to snark at him, to say that yeah, it is a simple question, but she's sure as hell isn't going to answer it. She keeps her mouth shut because every second they can drag this out without being killed is another second bought.

She sees the punch coming from a mile away but she's cuffed to the chair and can do little more than accept the pain as she doubles over and gasps for air. 

Karlov watches her pant for a moment before he turns and snaps something in Russian to the men who've been beating Will. She makes eye contact with Will but he doesn't look too worried about what Karlov said. She watches Karlov move as the other men release Will from the cable and continues to wonder how a man whose English sounds pretty damn American ended up with a Russian mob smack in the middle of Moscow. It’s inconsequential, really, and wasn't in his dossier, but it’s bugging her.

Will lands on his feet when the cable is released but staggers and falls to one knee on the concrete, reaching out with his cuffed hands to catch himself. 

They unhook Frankie’s cuffs from the chair and haul her up by her jacket. Her hands, unlike Will’s, are cuffed behind her back and she knows it’s because she’d killed three of Karlov’s men unarmed. She watches one of the men hold a gun to Will’s temple as another unlocks his cuffs to resecure them behind his back. Will had gotten two of Karlov’s men. Two is decidedly less than three and she’ll hold that over him later.

They’re marched down the hallway and shoved unceremoniously into the same cell they’d been in earlier. 

Frankie knows it doesn’t bode well that they’re not blindfolded. 

Will sits down with his back against the wall, where his hands are hidden from the camera in the corner. He grimaces as he stretches his legs out in front of him.

“Okay?” she asks as she sits beside him, a little more than an arm’s length away. Not that either of them can reach out to measure the distance. 

“Echo punches better than that guy,” he mutters, but she can tell he’s hurting. “How tight are your cuffs?” He says it low, hardly moving his lips.

“Mm… I could maybe get them off if I broke my thumb.”

He looks at her like he isn’t sure if it’s a joke. “Let’s leave that as a last resort,” he says. 

“Yeah, I’d prefer to.”

He tips his head back against the wall. “Well.” After a long moment of silence that Frankie can feel wearing as thin as his self-control, he turns his head against the wall so he’s looking at her. “This is fun. What do you want to talk about?”

“Nothing.”

“Hm. What about… what’s your favorite board game? I don't know that about you. And we’ve never played board games as a team. Maybe we should. But not Monopoly; that wouldn’t end well. For any of us, because Janus would obviously win. But I mean, the whole point would be for team bonding, unlike that time you cheated at Uno-- I’m still not over that, by the way; it was deeply hurtful, even if it wasn’t your idea to begin with-- but Monopoly just… destroys friendships. Even if the money is fake.”

He continues and she has to hand it to the man: he can talk. It’s a constant stream of continuous bullshit, no relevant information leaked, everyone’s call signs firmly in place as he rambles. 

She sends him a sidelong glare and he just smiles at her.

She knows it’s Karlov that Will’s trying to irritate since it’s a safe bet that he’s watching and listening, waiting for any shred of information that he can glean from or leverage against them, but this stream-of-consciousness rambling is already starting to grate on her nerves.

She leans her head back against the wall and does her best to ignore him. She’s certainly had enough practice. 

**

They’re both asleep, cold and uncomfortable on the concrete floor, when the door opens. 

“Get up,” one of the men barks in sharp-edged English.

“Good morning,” Will says to Frankie. He’s irritated by the rough wake up and lets it show.

She just grunts in response.

They both struggle awkwardly to their feet, stiff and numb and very, very cold.

They’re marched through the halls, again, and Will has to admit that he _hurts_. He’d told Frankie that the guy punched as well as Standish, which wasn’t exactly a compliment given Standish’s often questionable form, but it was an outright lie and he’s pretty sure she didn’t believe it for a second anyway. The cold has leached into the bruises left behind, leaving him stiff and aching. 

He knows they’d beat him to try to break Frankie. He knows it was just a warm-up, a way for Karlov to test the waters. Or, rather, a way for him to test the thickness of the ice.

He wonders if they’ll do it again.

He gets his answer very quickly.

They turn abruptly into a room and Will’s momentum is arrested with a firm grip on his shoulders. Frankie is shoved forward, toward the middle of the room, and Will can see the irritation on her face. 

Karlov steps up and pressed the barrel of his pistol right to Frankie’s temple. She glares sideways at him. “If you so much as twitch,” he says to Will, “I'll kill her. We only need one of you.”

Will nods. His cuffs are unlocked and he is so sure that Karlov is serious that he doesn’t even attempt to roll out the stiffness that pulls in his shoulders as his wrists are re-bound in front of him. It’s a weird choice on Karlov’s part and the deliberateness of the action sparks a cold worry in Will’s gut.

“Sit down,” Karlov says.

Will sits in the chair. Frankie’s back is to him, her hands cuffed, standing straight and relaxed but ready. Until Karlov slams his boot into the back of her knee and sends her to the floor. He jerks his head and one of the men drags her forward and Will knows exactly what they’ll do.

It’s so simple that it’s almost complicated. If he shows any weakness, they’ll torture Frankie to capitalize on it. If she shows any weakness, they’ll torture him to captialize on it. Both of them have to stand on even ground, equally impassive, and let this run its course until they can find a way out. 

So he sits silently and watches as they drown her.

They’ve put ice in the water, which tells Will that they know how to make it hurt. Frankie doesn’t so much as shift her weight on her knees in front of the tub as the man behind her rolls up his sleeves. He does it slowly, making her wait. Will can see her taking steady, even breaths, and then a deep inhale the moment the man seizes her shoulders. 

He forces her into the tub, head and shoulders.

She only struggles a little, instinctively, and he knows she’s saving her oxygen as best she can.

They pull her out and she’s only breathing like she’s doing a cardio workout in the gym with him.

“Tell me when the shipment is,” Karlov says. The pistol is still in his hand, by his side, but Will knows he won’t use it. He doesn’t doubt that Karlov would if they gave him reason to, but it’s more beneficial to his needs to keep them both alive. To be tortured, just like this. Will says nothing. “Again,” Karlov says.

And that’s how it goes.

Will refuses to answer, and Frankie drowns.

"Again."

The first few times they pull her free she’s panting like she’s been trying to outrun him in training, which she never can because he’s taller and has the stride to beat her every time. Except when she cheats, and sometimes even then.

"Again."

By the fifth time, and he’s counting, they’re holding her in longer and she’s breathing raggedly, almost desperately. She’s soaked from the water splashing out of the tub and even a few paces away where he sits he can see her shivering.

“Again.”

She fights the hold on her this time and another man joins the first, pinning her over the side of the tub and forcing her back down. Will can tell the moment she breathes because she suddenly isn’t so much struggling as she is thrashing in their grip. She’s strong enough-- and smart enough, for that matter-- to fight men bigger than Will and win, but she has no room to move. She’s trapped.

He watches as she starts losing consciousness, movements growing weaker and weaker until she's hardly moving at all. They finally pull her from the tub and drop her backward onto the floor. She coughs a little bit of the water out onto her face, weakly, but can’t get enough air in to get the rest up.

“Help her,” Karlov says and Will is out of the chair before the last syllable is in the air. He turns her roughly onto her side, too concerned to worry about being gentle. He hits her between the shoulders and then she’s coughing up water onto the concrete floor in mouthfuls, retching it up with stomach acid that she chokes on. Will pulls her hair out of her face as she shivers and gags.

“Back away.” Will does. 

Frankie is dragged down the hallway by her jacket and tossed in the cell after Will. She doesn’t make a move to get up. She’s soaked from the water splashing out of the tub and continues to shiver violently in the cold cell. Will straightens her out of the heap she’d fallen in and arranges her on her side so it’s a little easier to breathe.

“Good thing for you I took a water safety and lifeguard first aid course when I was in the Boy Scouts,” he says.

“I’ll let them torture me again... instead of you... if you agree... to shut the hell up,” she whispers, voice ragged. 

“No deal,” he says. 

**

Will sits with her all night. Or, all of whatever time of day it is. 

She's still having a hard time breathing, coughing up a thin foam every time she inhales too deeply. Will tells her it's just her body trying to get everything up. She stays uncomfortably positioned on her side and tries to sleep it off. 

Until she wakes up to a bucket of cold water being dumped over both of them. 

She gasps at the sudden chill and immediately regrets it as she starts coughing again. Her chest feels stiff and painful and she knows that's probably less than good. 

One of the men fists his hands in her jacket and pulls her roughly into a sitting position. He uncuffs her and steps back. Another of the men has a pistol pointed at both her and Will. "Jacket off," the other snaps. She hesitates. "Jacket off."

She peels the soaked fabric away and holds it up for his outstretched hand. He snatches it when she makes no move to actually hand it to him. 

He resecures her cuffs, in front of her, this time, and repeats the whole process with Will. 

"Get up," the man says. 

Frankie tries to get her legs untangled. Will unfolds himself stiffly beside her, not-so-subtly trying to ease the tension out of his aching muscles. Frankie stands beside him, a little dizzy and a lot winded but surprised at how relatively okay she feels, all things considered. 

"Let's go," he says, like they have a choice. 

They're marched down the hallway again. Will is too sore to quite stand up straight. Frankie hears her own breath wheezing in her ears. It’s a miserable walk.

Frankie is shoved into the chair. One of the men grabs Will with two hands fisted in the collar of his shirt before kicking the back of his knee to force him to the floor in front of the tub she got acquainted with yesterday. 

Frankie lets her face betray nothing. 

Karlov finally comes into the room, later than she’d expected him. She’d thought he’d have been waiting. “So,” he says. “The question hasn’t changed.” He sounds like he’s from New York, maybe. Somewhere decidedly American, at least, and decidedly not Russian. She still hasn't puzzled this out. 

She just waits. Coughs a little. Waits some more. 

"Okay. You know how this goes," Karlov says, like he warned her. 

Will uses the same strategy she used yesterday, trying to restrain his instinctive reaction, trying not to fight, trying to make his oxygen last as long as possible. Karlov's men pull him free after the first dunk and he shakes his head like a dog, spraying water in their faces just to piss them off. A small part of her wants to smile. 

"Again," Karlov says. 

It's worse than watching him be beaten. She knows exactly how he felt yesterday when they were in opposite places. Karlov's man shoves Will forward so his chest hits the edge of the tub. She sees him wince at the impact of the metal against his bruises and she inhales. She chokes on it. 

Will only turns his head a little as she coughs, like he was going to look at her and thought better of it. It's only a fraction of a moment but Karlov takes a step forward and Frankie knows he's read the significance of it in his body language. 

"Again."

"Again."

"Again."

She holds on to impassivity with every shred of strength she can. She has one play here. She trusts Will enough to not give up the intel Karlov is looking for, no matter what happens, which is the only reason she believes she can make this work. They pull Will free and drop him to the floor. He winces visibly at the force of the fall and she wonders again if he doesn't have a few cracked ribs from the beating he'd taken. He coughs some water onto the floor, the sort of watery cough he'd made after she'd dunked him at the lake, when he’d looked at her with dramatic faux betrayal. The water had been gray beneath the clouds as the rain came in but he’d smiled like it was perfect. Then he'd spit water in her face and dunked both of them. 

It's a good memory. She holds onto it. 

"Tell me when the shipment is."

"No." It's the first time either of them have replied. She needs Karlov to be sure that they do have the intel, otherwise she's starting to worry that he'll kill them just because he's getting bored with this. 

"I'll kill him."

She does the only thing she can. She shrugs. 

Will looks at her like he's surprised. She doesn't know if that's real. 

"Your turn, then."

This is exactly what she wanted. They pull her from the chair, throwing her towards it so hard that she lands on her side, smacking her cheek on the tub. Will is sat in the chair and Frankie is dragged up onto her knees. Karlov gets close to her for the first time, squatting next to her. He puts his hand on her chin and turns her head so he can see the bruise erupting on her cheek. 

"That's a shame, really. You're too pretty for that." He draws his thumb along her lower lip and she says nothing. Behind her, Will is absolutely irate. She can feel it. Karlov taps her face with his fingers, gently, but right on the bruise. 

He steps back and doesn't give a warning before the man behind her shoves her head under the surface of the water. 

She can't hold her breath this time. Her chest burns and she fights the hold on her because she knows she can't outlast this. He pins her to the tub with his body weight behind her and after a long minute of resisting the impulse as best she can, she breathes. She coughs that out and breathes again. Her chest aches and she coughs and breathes. 

She doesn't realise they've pulled her from the tub until her bruised cheek hits the floor. She gags on the water her chest is struggling to force out, a wet, gurgling sound.

"Don't move," Karlov barks behind her. She guesses it's directed at Will because she's sure as hell not feeling inclined to move. "Find a snowbank and throw him outside," Karlov says, in English, and she knows he wants her to understand. 

Frankie swallows back every shred of fear and anger as they haul him to his feet and march him out of the room. 

Karlov himself is the one who drags her back into a sitting position this time. He's squatting behind her, his chest against her back, and he wraps his fingers slowly around her throat. "You'll tell me," he says into her ear. He sounds so sure of it that she laughs only to choke on it. There’s a sickeningly wet sound that crackles in her chest. Karlov tightens his hand around her throat, squeezing brutally as though she wasn't already struggling to breathe. She realizes that he's deliberately leaving bruises. Bruises for Will to see. 

Spots start dancing in front of her eyes but she refuses to fight against the hold Karlov has on her. 

She's spent a lifetime fighting. Sometimes, though, sometimes the smarter choice is not to fight. It was never a choice she'd have made before Will, but he's taught her constantly to fight smarter, not harder. Another cliche. He always seems to drag them along in tow. It might be a lesson she learned from him, but it's her own stubbornness that she can use as an asset. He'd said it grudgingly once, and she'd smiled. Maybe he really is her better half. Maybe she should tell him that more. 

Now she knows she's starting to get delirious. 

Karlov finally lets her go and she goes boneless in his grip, struggling to breathe. He keeps a grip on the collar of her shirt. She's wheezing and Karlov leans closer. He draws a knuckle down her cheek, trailing over the bruise she'd gotten earlier, beneath the curve of her jaw, and down the column of her throat until he meets the line of her collarbone. He blows a soft breath against her ear. She's freezing and sick and there's nothing she can do to fight the instinctive shiver that runs down her back. 

Karlov chuckles, a vibration she can feel where his chest is pressed against her back. Then he does it again. 

She wants to kill him for making her feel so violated with such a simple action. 

She will, if she gets the chance.

Karlov jostles her as he stands and nods to the man standing by the tub. Karlov strolls out of the room, unhurried, as the other man drags Frankie to her feet. She staggers along beside him and focuses on keeping her legs beneath her. He shoves her into the cell and the door shuts with a solid clang as she hits the floor. She sighs in relief, the sound half strangled. 

There’s no voice beside her, no warm concern, no gentle hand on her shoulder. Will’s not here. She tries to position herself like he’d put her before, but it doesn’t seem to make it much easier to breathe. 

She waits, trusting that he’s tough enough to survive whatever they’ll do to him.

**

She's just started dozing off when the door is opened, Will is thrown into the room, and the door is shut again. She barely has time to blink. The room is so small that she only has to scoot forward a few times to be by his side. He's still, but breathing, lips blue. He's shivering faintly. His shirt, which had been soaked from his dunk in the tub, has frozen stiffly against him. 

She manages to slip her arms over his head so her cuffed wrists are in front of them and lays them both back down on the concrete, his back tight to her chest. He hooks a finger with one of hers and she knows he's at least somewhat conscious. 

He's absolutely freezing and she's already shivering. She presses her face to the back of his neck, tucks her knees up behind his, and tries to ignore how miserably cold they are. 

**

"Hey. Hey, wake up." He doesn't say her name but he shakes her shoulders to wake her. 

"What."

"You don't sound good," he says. "Maybe you should sit up."

"You don't _look_ good," she wheezes out. 

"Yeah I feel awful. And you look terrible too, but nice try."

Will is pretty sure that she looks even worse than he feels. Her face is flushed and the shadows under her eyes are dark. The bruise on her cheek has settled into a burst of night blue fading down her face. There's a ring of black and blue around her throat and Will knows exactly how it got there. 

Frankie rolls her eyes at him with much less drama or enthusiasm than she usually does. It seems more like habit than anything. "Go back to sleep," she says. 

"Can't. You're breathing too loud."

"Fine."

He closes his hands around her arm and helps pull her into a sitting position. She coughs with a sharp wheeze on the edge of each. She starts gagging on it and Will stretches his cuffs as far as the chain will let him to rub her shoulder. He knows he shouldn’t if there are cameras but it occurs to him after the fact. He shows his concern for her so much more easily than she does. It doesn’t mean he loves her any better than she loves him, though, and they both know that.

When it abates a bit she scoots backward toward the wall until they're both sitting propped against it. The concrete is brutally cold behind them and it occurs to Will for the first time that he can see his breath even in the dim light. He shifts so that he can get his cuffs over Frankie's head and pull her against him. She looks up with a question on her face. 

"I'm going to need your body heat," he says, "and right now you've got more than enough to spare."

"Yeah," she says mildly.

"How are you doing?"

"I'm fine."

He nods. She's too warm against him even in the cold cell. He still hasn't quite gotten the feeling back in his fingers and his whole body is painfully stiff with cold. 

He's asleep before she is. 

**

She's cuffed with her hands behind her back this time. It's flattering for them to assume she's in any kind of shape to be fighting back, but she's not really sure what they think she's going to do to them besides cough aggressively in their direction. 

Karlov's men throw Will against the side of the tub and Frankie wonders just how much more of this they're going to have to take before someone finally figures out where the fuck they are. As a spy she knows the only person she can count on is herself. That now extends to Will, too, of course. It was part of the deal. But the whole point of working with a team is to have ground support when it's needed, because running tactical missions is not exactly espionage, even if it is meant to be done covertly. In a situation like this, they're supposed to have support. It's just really late. Really, really late. She's not sure they're going to get out of this one without help. 

Will can barely sit up. One of the men is holding him up with a grip on his shirt but he's slumped against the hold like a marionette with its strings not quite tense. She's sure he's hypothermic even though he’s had her body heat against him for the past few hours. He's a lot less coherent now than he was when he'd woken her up; he hasn't spoken to Karlov, but she can see the difficulty he's having just focusing on his surroundings. 

Karlov slaps Will across the face in what she assumes is an attempt to rouse him into a state of better lucidity. She must be struggling to focus too because she hadn't even noticed Karlov raise his hand. 

Will doesn’t rouse at all and Karlov signals his man with a flick of his wrist to drop him in a heap. Frankie resolves to kill him.

“Throw him outside,” Karlov says, making eye contact with Frankie as he says it. Two of the men drag Will away. Karlov jerks his head and Frankie is hauled from the chair and dropped carelessly to her knees in front of the tub. Karlov looks down at her. “If you don’t tell me when the shipment is, I’ll leave your boyfriend outside until he freezes to death.”

Frankie wheezes out a laugh. “He’s so not my boyfriend.”

“Do you have so little regard for his life anyway? Boyfriend or not, friend or not, he must have someone who loves him. Think of how they’d feel if he died.” She doesn’t have to think very hard. She knows exactly how she’d feel. “If you tell me when the shipment is, I’ll let him live.” She snorts. “You really don’t care about him, do you?” 

He’s so pitifully predictable. Cautious, yes, in a way that’s prevented them from escaping, but predictable in a way that’s let her sell this gambit. She shrugs.

“Then do you not have any sense of self-preservation?”

“Not really,” she snarks. She knows how to wear apathy like a shell, so she pulls it tight around herself.

Karlov himself shoves her in the tub this time. It hurts even worse than it had before, every inhale of the water slicing through her chest like the stroke of a knife. She tries to shake his grip free, instinctively fighting against him, but she’s sick and exhausted and he leans his weight into her even more. The edge of the tub is digging into her chest. The pressure in her head is almost unbearable as the lack of oxygen starts to chip away at consciousness.

Karlov pulls her from the tub and she blacks out before she even hits the floor.

**

Will has been a spy long enough to know that when things go pear-shaped, they go _really_ pear-shaped. So pear-shaped that they barely even resemble a pear anymore. He and Frankie were supposed to be in and out, recovering the data and back at the Hive in time for dinner, and yet here they are being held as prisoners at a secondary location.

Definitely not odds that still look like a pear, considering they’re also now separated. He doubts Karlov will throw them back in the cell together this time.

He worries about Frankie as he lies in the snow. He’s so cold that it hurts across every inch of his body, his chest aching as he tries to breathe the frigid air into lungs that have already been abused over the past couple days. Or however long it’s been. He’s not really sure at this point.

His one solace is that at least she’s not out here with him. She’s definitely come down with some kind of pneumonia, and although he’s well on his way there too, he’ll always put her life first. That was part of the deal.

He stopped shivering a while ago and it’s getting hard to focus. He thinks of Frankie and the time he’d thrown a snowball at her with questionable aim; as she’d turned, it had nailed her right in the face. She’d paused just for a moment, just long enough for him to start fearing what she’d do to him, and then she’d tackled him. She’d been mad as hell, but she’d also laughed. Snow was melting down his collar and into his hat but she was smiling and warm above him.

It’s a good memory. He holds onto it. 

**

Frankie wakes to the sound of gunshots. She digs a heel against the concrete to force herself onto her side. Her head is hazy and her chest is burning, but she struggles up onto her knees and then staggers to her feet, coughing. 

She presses her back against the wall beside the door, her cuffs cutting into her skin at the pressure, and waits. She hears yelling outside in the hallway, then the click of something in the lock, and she kicks out at the first person through the door. 

He’s little more than a shadow in the dim room, all clad in black, but he falls to one knee with a swear in Russian. There’s another man behind him and she lunges forward so she’s too close for him to shoot her with the rifle he’s carrying. It doesn’t leave her much room to strike, though, since her hands are still bound, but she forces him back a step. The man she’d just kicked grabs her from behind and throws her to the floor. 

“Stand down!” someone yells as the man raises his rifle. Frankie struggles to her feet and lunges toward him again. “Fiery Tribune, stand _down_!” It’s the man in the doorway, the third figure, and she knows his voice. She halts immediately and he steps in. “Are you okay? Where’s Whiskey?” It’s Ray. She hadn’t identified him at first because he’s wearing a ski mask over his face like the Russian soldiers.

“Fine,” she wheezes. “Get these fucking cuffs off me.”

Ray steps behind her and fiddles with a lockpick to free her wrists. “Where’s Whiskey?” 

“I dunno. They separated us.”

One of the cuffs releases and Frankie shrugs her shoulders with a wince. Ray comes around so he’s standing in front of her, working on the other cuff. “Is he okay?”

“He’s hypothermic.” She wheezes for a moment. “Last I saw him he was alive, though. I think they took him outside.”

“No one outside,” one of the Russian soldiers says. It surprises Frankie to find that it’s a woman. “We walked around building first.”

“He must be inside, then,” Frankie says. 

The other cuff releases and Ray lets them clatter to the floor. “Okay. Come with me; these guys’ll go find him.”

“No.”

“What do you mean no?!”

“I mean no. Give me a gun.”

“You’re in no shape to--” 

She takes a threatening step towards him. “I’m going to go get my husband, and I’m going to go put a bullet in Karlov’s head. And if you tell me the kill order was rescinded I’ll shoot you too.”

“It wasn’t,” Ray sighs. He pulls a pistol from his belt for her. She rolls her shoulders again as she takes it. There’s a painful, stiff pull along the top and across her shoulder blades. She just wants to find Will and soak in a hot bath until she’s less stiff. She follows Ray out the door and coughs as quietly as she can into her elbow. He hands her an earbud. “Fiery’s on coms,” he says softly.

“Welcome back,” Jai says.

“You okay?” Susan asks.

“Fine,” she whispers.

“Well you sound great,” Standish says. 

She coughs again.

“Really great,” Jai agrees.

“How about you all shut up,” Frankie wheezes.

They move quietly through the compound and Frankie struggles not to cough. Every breath is like a suckerpunch that makes her feel like she’s suffocating. A searing ache is burning behind her eyes. She ignores it. Finding Will is the most important thing.

They sweep the building room by room. They stumble on the room with the tub after what feels like forever. Frankie knows it can’t have been very long, but the knowledge that Will’s life depends on them finding him really exacerbates the slow passage of time. 

The concrete is still damp, the water that had splashed from the tub not having dried in the cold air. “Looks recently used,” Ray says.

“Yeah,” Frankie says. “We’ve been acquainted.”

“Do you think Will was here after you saw him?”

She studies the water on the floor and thinks about how long she might’ve been unconscious. “No. It was me.”

“Okay.”

They keep looking.

Frankie knows they’ve found where Will is being held when shots ring out, embedding themselves in the concrete just above the Russian man’s head. They press against the sides of the hallway and the woman pulls a flashbang from her vest. “Cover ears,” she says softly. She throws the grenade into the room and Frankie sees the flash even with her eyes closed and her head turned away. They storm the room, the two Russians first, then Ray, and Frankie bringing up the rear. She knows she’s slower than she needs to be right now and is better off letting them take lead. 

They eliminate the four men in the room before they can fire back. There’s smoke clinging to the floor, rising to waist level, obscuring the room. Frankie can just barely make out a shape on the floor that isn’t one of the dead mobsters. She takes a step forward and someone grabs her from behind. She lands an elbow to Karlov’s solar plexus, knocking the breath out of him, and throws him over her shoulder. He hits the concrete with a grunt and then stands, hands held slightly out from his hips, palms toward her.

“I’m unarmed,” he says.

“So?” Frankie grunts.

“You wouldn’t shoot an unarmed man.”

“Says who.” Karlov might be a fool, but she hadn’t pegged him as a complete idiot.

"Don't you have any morality at all?"

As far as manipulation goes, it's maybe the shittiest attempt as she's ever heard. "Sure," she acknowledges, jerking her head toward where Will lays on the floor. "You've met." Karlov reaches behind him but can’t draw his weapon before hits the concrete with a round in his head. 

Her orders had been to bring Karlov in alive if possible, but only if they were easily able to take him down. Otherwise, they had permission to eliminate him, free and clear.

She kneels next to Will, pressing her fingers to his throat. He coughs a little, opening his eyes and looking up at her. “Hi,” he wheezes with a smile. 

“Hi.” She can’t help but smile back when he looks at her like that. 

“As far as ways to wake up, a flashbang isn’t the best,” he says weakly. He looks terrible.

“Did you look at it?”

“I didn’t see it, but I heard it,” he says. “So I have no idea what you just said.” She runs a hand over his hair. “Wow, now I know I look like hell. You’re being affectionate.”

“Shut up,” she says and knows he read her lips when he smiles. She tries to help him sit up, but the two of them together aren’t strong enough. Ray grabs ahold of Will’s arm and helps until Will’s mostly sitting. 

“Hey, man, come help me,” he says to the Russian man. They get Will standing with his weight distributed between them and the woman helps Frankie stand.

“Walk to truck,” she says.

“Great,” Frankie mutters. She coughs into her arm again, grimacing.

“There is blankets,” she says helpfully.

“Thank god.” The woman smiles and Frankie follows her out of the room.

**

Frankie finds that the woman wasn’t joking at all when she said it was a walk to the truck. They’re walking through a field, leaving footprints behind in the snow. Frankie watches as the wind blows drifts and the powder twists in the air. She coughs and her breath steams in the air.

“Okay?” the woman says, touching Frankie’s arm in a way that makes her think it wasn’t the first time she said it.

“Yeah.”

Ray and the man are beside them with Will between them. He’s stumbling along but his chin is on his chest and he only seems conscious enough to move on reflex. “You sure?” Ray says.

She registers the words but doesn’t think to reply.

“Is she shivering?” Ray asks the woman.

“Shivering?” she says, mimicking the word.

“Yeah, like, uh, brr,” he says, miming a shiver.

“Oh. She-- no.”

There’s a ring of shadow dancing around the edges of her vision and she stumbles as her chin hits her chest and startles her awake again. The woman ducks under Frankie’s arm, pulling it across her shoulders. 

“Is close,” the woman says. “Just there.” She nods toward the crest of the hill.

“Yeah,” Frankie says.

She ends up trudging most of the way up the hill with her eyes closed because it’s too much effort to keep her eyes open and her feet moving at the same time. The soldier bears her weight without complaint.

She finally does open her eyes when she hears the door of a truck being opened; it’s a utility van, and the male soldier jumps into the back to lay a blanket on the floor. 

“Is cold,” he says. “No heat in back.”

He helps Ray get Will inside and lay him on the floor before Ray and the woman haul Frankie inside as well. They lay her down and she tucks herself against Will’s back, pulling him close with a numb arm around his waist.

“Don’t suppose there’s another blanket,” she says faintly.

“Yeah,” Ray says. “One more.”

The engine starts and Ray lays the second blanket over the top of them. 

“Thanks,” she says. She coughs. “And thanks for coming to get us.”

“I know you’re sick and all, but stop thanking me. It makes me feel weird.”

Frankie doesn’t have enough breath to laugh, but she does smile.

**

Will wakes as he’s being pulled from the van. There's a man he doesn’t recognize beside him, propping him up. “My wife,” Will says hazily. “Where’s-- where’s my wife.”

“Wife is fine,” the man says. “Over there.” Will follows the man’s nod to where Ray and the other soldier are walking with Frankie between them toward the transport plane. 

“She okay?” Will asks.

“Yes, okay,” he says. “Not good, but okay. You also okay.”

Will just grunts at that. “Okay” is a generous description of how he feels. “Thanks for helping us.”

The man nods. “You helped us, so we helped you.” 

Will nods in return. 

Ray returns after a few minutes and he and the soldier haul Will from the truck. He can do little more than sag limply between them and try to keep his feet beneath him. 

They drag him up the ramp of the plane and past the cargo that’s strapped down. “Not a comfortable ride,” Ray says, “but it’ll get us back to the States pretty quick.” They sit Will down in the seat next to Frankie, who seems to be asleep with her chin on her chest. “Thanks guys,” he says to the two Russian soldiers. 

Both of them smile. “Goodbye,” the woman says. “Maybe we work with you again.”

“But better situation,” the man adds.

They leave and Ray wraps Will in a blanket before helping him secure the harness. “It’ll be cold,” Ray says. “We’ve only got emergency supplies, but there’s some heatpacks in the kit.” The ramp shuts slowly, hydraulics groaning. “Here.” Ray hands him two of the shaken heatpacks to press between his hands. They haven't warmed up yet. Will knows he’s so cold that they’ll hurt whenthey do. “Frankie,” Ray says, trying to rouse her. Will can hear her wheezing even under the sound of the engines. He shakes her knee. She blinks awake. “I’m going to put this on you to make the flight a little easier.” Ray holds up an oxygen mask. She doesn’t bother disentangling her arms from the blanket to put it on, so Ray does it for her. He turns the valve on the tank just a little bit. “You too, buddy,” he says to Will.

“Yay,” Will says joylessly. Frankie smiles. He knows the cargo bay will be pressurized, hence the fact that there are jump seats back here, but that the air will get thinner than it does on passenger airplanes. Ray’s actually thinking.

“Buckle up back there,” the pilot says. “We’re approaching the runway.”

Ray buckles himself into the seat on Frankie’s other side.

Will reaches out to take Frankie’s hand, trapping one of the heatpacks between their palms. She squeezes back.

**

Contrary to popular belief, spies do, in fact, get sick days. At least, when they’re recovering from pneumonia, recently released from a multi-day hospital stay, and still benched from duty they do.

“Okay,” Will says, climbing back into bed with his laptop.

“ _Fool’s Gold_ ,” Frankie says, adjusting her palms around the mug of tea he brought her a few minutes ago.

“I hadn’t even asked yet.”

“I knew what you were going to ask. And you keep choosing the really sad or really dramatic ones. I want a comedy.”

“I knew you’d like romcoms eventually.”

“I don’t,” she says quickly. “But I do like this movie.”

“Me too,” he agrees. “Kate Hudson and Matthew McConahey are so good together. Ooh! We could watch How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days!”

“Will, play the movie or you’ll be sleeping by yourself tonight.”

He clicks on Netflix and wraps an arm around her waist. “But you’re warm,” he says with a smile. She laughs and he presses a kiss to her lips. “I love you. So much.”

“Ugh, I know. I love you too. Even when you’re gross and phlegmy and smell like Vick’s vaporub.”

“God, you're such a romantic. And I’d certainly hope so, considering you married me.”

“No, that was just for the inheritance.”

“See, maybe I’d believe that if there was one. And I only had to ask you once. You didn’t even make me work for it.”

“I knew you’d just keep asking.”

“That’s absolutely not at all why, but you’re right; I would’ve.”

She laughs and he kisses her temple. He pulls her a little closer and kisses her on the lips again.

She leans away. “If you stick your tongue in my mouth, I’ll punch you.”

He smiles. “But me being able to kiss you all the time is kind of a perk of being married.”

“Sure, but you put on so much Vicks that I can almost taste it. It’s gross.”

“Fair,” he says and kisses her on the cheek, right at the corner of her mouth.

She draws in a slow breath as he lets it linger and then turns away from him to cough. He runs a hand over her hair. She sets her mug on the nightstand and turns so she’s tucked against his side with her head on his chest and her arms around him. He strokes her hair again and then draws his hand over her shoulder until his arm is resting over her. 

She wiggles in an effort to get a little closer to him even though she’s already pasted herself against his side. “You’re so warm,” she mumbles.

“So are you,” he says with a smile that tells her he doesn’t mean physically.

“It’s the fever,” she quips.

“Oh, I know,” he says easily, giving her an out. He always does.

“I love you,” she says, looking up at him with her chin on his chest.

“I know you do. I love you too.”

She smiles. “I know you do.”

She lays her head back on his chest and he rests his cheek against her hair as he clicks play.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't believe this is finally finished. I have other stuff on deck very soon. Stay tuned.
> 
> Side note: _Fool's Gold_ is absurdly hilarious and an incredibly underrated romcom. If you've never seen it, do yourself the favor and watch it. As someone who isn't a huge fan of romcoms, this one kills me every time.


End file.
